I call it a perfect paragraph and in terms of business ethics, it is. The lessons of the 2007 financial crisis that would have made an intelligent man cautious about financial innovation have not been learned. The one lesson that has sunk in, is that if your institution is big enough and influential enough not only will the government prevent its failure, you will keep your job and with a little luck your bonus.
The Ethic Sage’s analysis is correct. There is going to have to be more government regulation. If not, we risk another global catastrophe.
The financial crisis and its aftermath created a hole in the moral ozone that is supposed serve as a check on excessive, risky behavior by investment bankers. It is a breach that, in my opinion, is irreparable absent any dramatic steps to better control the risk appetite of some in the financial services industry. This saddens me because the last thing we need is more government regulation. Unfortunately, it may be necessary because the very ethical standards that are supposed to protect the public under capitalism have broken down. Adam Smith in his iconic The Wealth of Nations stated that: By pursuing his own interest he [the capitalist] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. His theory no longer describes the way our free market economy works and its breakdown explains, in part, the economic gap in our society.
As always, I recommend you to go to The Ethic Sage’s blog and read the entire post. Further, you should favorite the site and read it regularly. I do.
At the bottom of the page are four documentaries. They are listed not in the order in which they appeared on television (BBC) but chronologically by era – Tudor, Victorian and Edwardian. Please note there several hundred years between the Tudor and the Victorian but, you know, “television.”
These documentaries are significant in terms of business law. For one thing, they demonstrate social change. If you watch the films you will note that while women were treated badly during the Victorian era, the sufferings of women in the Tudor period are appalling.
For another, these are largely pre-regulation societies, and I’m referring directly to business regulation. You’re going to see electric companies simply making up the rules as to proper voltage, insulation and wiring as they go along. You’re going to see food adulteration; sour milk made to taste okay but still sour and bread that appears nourishing but is actually full of inert filler. You’re going to see beauty products that kill, maim and disfigure women. It would not be incorrect to say that the idea of regulating business developed because of all these deaths over many years.
These documentaries are also windows into the past. If you have been in one of my classes, you know that I am a fierce critic of television portrayals of American history. Often overly dramatic, these television shows portray women very much as they live and act today, not to mention having an incredible focus on beautiful outfits. Women did not act in the past as they do now. They were very limited in how much participation in any form of social activity they were allowed and they were certainly almost always placed at a safe distance from power. That some women were able to be influential should not be considered as proof that women were influential but as amazing exceptions to the general rules. For almost all women through almost all of American history, they were relegated to the “women’s” sphere. And as to the glamorous clothing portrayed in these TV shows and movies, a lot of women’s clothing styles in the past were ugly and bizarre. It takes tremendous effort on the part of clothing designers to make this stuff look good. And this is because imposing ridiculous, nonsensical and cruel standards of beauty on women has never gone out of style.
I hate these portrayals because when there is a strong implication that women were always vital, respected members of society, this implies that no action was really necessary to give women a fuller role in society and belittles the terrible trials suffered by women who advocated for a more equal and better world. And I don’t like the emphasis on fashion and clothes because it implies a level of sophistication and beauty for past eras of crass stupidity, rampant disease, and moral degradation as well as high levels of illiteracy and superstition.
So, have a look at several bygone ages and see how other people have lived and suffered.
James Pilant
Hidden Killers of the Tudor Home BBC Documentary 2015 – YouTube
Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home – YouTube
New Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home – YouTube
This afternoon the National Labor Relations Board ruled that in many cases an employee of a sub-contractor is joint employee of both the sub-contractor and the contracting company.
The End of Subcontracting as We Know It?
How do you determine who is joint employee? It would appear that the board is going to use some of the same standards used to determine whether someone is an employee or an independent contractor.
It’s about time.
The practice of sub-contracting janitorial services, etc. has long been a cover for labor abuses. Companies have been using sub-contracting to evade labor laws and avoid the consequences of poor working conditions and sub-standard pay.
Can I document this kind of abuse? How about here, here, here or here?
We’re talking about using sub-contractors to commit fraud in non-profits, government contracts and Medicare. We’re talking about using sub-contracting to create sweat shop conditions while providing deniability to the principal company.
This was long overdue and it is of critical important because this kind of subcontracting is almost an endemic practice by American businesses. It’s about time that an employee of a company employed through what is essentially a shell company is considered an employee of the main company.
In the decision, the Board applies long-established principles to find that two or more entities are joint employers of a single workforce if (1) they are both employers within the meaning of the common law; and (2) they share or codetermine those matters governing the essential terms and conditions of employment. In evaluating whether an employer possesses sufficient control over employees to qualify as a joint employer, the Board will – among other factors — consider whether an employer has exercised control over terms and conditions of employment indirectly through an intermediary, or whether it has reserved the authority to do so.
The National Labor Relations Board on Thursday handed down one of the biggest decisions of the Obama presidency, ruling that companies can be held equally responsible for labor violations committed by their contractors.
At issue is whether waste management firm Browning-Ferris is responsible for the treatment of its contractor’s employees. The Houston-based company hired Leadpoint Business Services to staff a recycling facility in California.
The labor board determined Browning-Ferris should be considered a joint employer with the Phoenix-based staffing agency. As a result, the company could be pulled into collective bargaining negotiations with those employees and held liable for any labor violations committed against them.
This is a sharp departure from previous labor laws that hold companies responsible only for employees who are under their direct control by setting their hours, wages, or job responsibilities. Companies could avoid those requirements by hiring staffing agencies and subcontractors that deal more closely with the workers.
Many Americans, probably most, belief in merit. They believe that if you work hard, do the right thing and achieve that they will be rewarded and that reward will be in some relation to the effort put out.
But is merit actually rewarded?
There is strong evidence that we live in a two tiered society. Two groups of people, one a group of the very well off are able to afford the finest private schools for their children as well as many other advantages. The other, those whose children are relegated to the public or charter school systems will almost never rival the success or income of the first group.
Currently there is a Ivy League Prep School under a moral cloud for the male student’s custom of scoring points by having sex with the a certain of co-eds. I am unhappy that this is apparently taking place. But there was more upsetting news in the article. What I then read is quoted at the bottom of the page but let me pull a section out. –
Secretary of State John Kerry graduated from St Paul’s in 1962, alongside former FBI director Robert Mueller. Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau is an alumnus as are 13 US ambassadors, three Pulitzer Prize winners, two World Series of Poker winners, actor Judd Nelson and sons of the Astor and Kennedy families, according to the school’s website.
This is where the one percent go. This is where the connections that lead to wealth, influence and power are made. This is the difference between struggling to make a living and a golden road of unending triumph.
Perhaps this doesn’t disturb you. Maybe you believe that you have earned your station in life?
But I am a teacher. I have college students who I am very proud of. And I have every reason to be proud of them. Every day I teach I see their obvious intelligence, their willingness to do more than necessary and an understanding that there are things that are very wrong in our society and that they will be called upon as a duty to remedy these failings.
And not for one moment at any time, do I consider my students to be less talented, less motivated and lesser people that the privileged few who have the opportunity to attend St. Pauls.
Nevertheless, I am aware of the tragedy clearly expressed here. Merit is not being rewarded. Parental income is being rewarded. Can there be anything clearer thatn that success in this society is only partially based on merit if it carries any weight at all?
Not one of my students, no matter how talented, no matter how kind, how genuine, how hardworking or intelligent is likely attain the success of the worst student at this prep school.
That’s wrong.
The very idea of business ethics implies merit. It implies that you hire based on capability. It implies fairness and square dealing, honesty in negotiation and a desire for mutual benefit.
I have met business people who roll their eyes when I say these things and look at me with the contempt one would have for a foolish child.
I welcome their contempt. I welcome their disdain. There is some justice in this world and a final justice in the next. I have faith in the necessity of the one and the inevitability of the other.
My students should have the same chance as those that go to elite prep schools. In fact, we should all be judged by our individual merits rather than who are parents are and what school we went to.
And when businesses hire on any other basis than merit, they have failed a fundamental test of business ethics.
James Pilant
Rape case puts focus on elite prep school’s alleged sexual tradition | US news | The Guardian
Founded in 1856, St Paul’s is an Episcopal school nestled on 2,000 pastoral acres (800 hectares) on the outskirts of downtown Concord, New Hampshire’s capital. It enrolls about 530 students and admitted girls for the first time in 1971. Tuition, room and board currently totals $53,810.
The school belongs to the Eight Schools Association, a sort of Ivy League for prep schools in the US north-east.
Secretary of State John Kerry graduated from St Paul’s in 1962, alongside former FBI director Robert Mueller. Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau is an alumnus as are 13 US ambassadors, three Pulitzer Prize winners, two World Series of Poker winners, actor Judd Nelson and sons of the Astor and Kennedy families, according to the school’s website.
The school also has a robust international presence: 17% of the 2014-15 class came from 25 countries and notable alumni include Bernard Makihara, the former CEO of the Mitsubishi Corporation, and Edmund Maurice Burke Roche, a Conservative member of the British Parliament and the maternal grandfather of Diana, princess of Wales.
Three years ago, a worker at a tuna plant was slow cooked to death in a giant pressure cooker with six tons of tuna. (Please read the brief selection from the Guardian below my commentary.) The federal government has a surprising number of rules about the necessity of not killing your employees. In this case the rules being dealt with are the “lockout tagout” rules and cover employment situations where such precautions are necessary like the 12,000 lb. capacity ovens at Bumblebee.
Some writers on the web have pointed out the similarities of this incident to one of the stories from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. This is from the end of the book’s Chapter 9 –
... Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer men, and
those who served in the cooking rooms. These people could not be shown
to the visitor,--for the odor of a fertilizer man would scare any
ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who
worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open
vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they
fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never
enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,--sometimes they would be
overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the
world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!
Of course, the feds took little interest in such things at the time, The Jungle, was published.
There are many today who sincerely believe that businesses will self-regulate if the feds would only step away and allow the invisible hand of the free market to rule. This is one of the beliefs held by Milton Friedman in what must be considered one of his more comedic moments. The idea that humans will become kind and good and willing to suffer monetary loss for worker safety if only the government would step away is more appropriate for small children than adults with experience of a capitalist society.
James Pilant
Bumble Bee Foods settles for $6m in death of worker cooked with tuna | US news | The Guardian
Jose Melena, 62, died three years ago in a 270F oven at the seafood company’s Santa Fe Springs plant after a co-worker mistakenly believed he was in the bathroom and filled a pressure cooker with six tons of canned tuna.
“This is the worst circumstances of death I have ever, ever witnessed,” said deputy district attorney Hoon Chun, who noted he had tried more than 40 murder cases over two decades. “I think any person would prefer to be – if they had to die some way – would prefer to be shot or stabbed than to be slowly cooked in an oven.”
Bumble Bee, its plant operations director Angel Rodriguez and former safety manager Saul Florez had each been charged with three counts of violating Occupational Safety & Health Administration rules that caused a death.
I was on Facebook the other day, and one of my relatives posted about Obama’s visit to Oklahoma. I spend the first 44 years of my life there and many of my relatives still live there. Some of the comments were, in my mind, bizarre. Obama was evil incarnate according to these individuals. One comment stood out. The writer claimed that anything whatsoever that Obama said was a lie. That is really over the top. It’s simply not possible to lie about every single thing. How would a person who believed such a thing have any opportunity, the smallest chance of analyzing a federal policy in terms of logic or benefit or usefulness with that kind of idea in mind?
Reason is Basic to Decision Making in Business Ethics
I remember a few years ago, a famous cartoonist came out against Obama. He said it was because Obama was enforcing the federal marijuana laws against states where it had been legalized. I always thought that he had formulated a reason that made sense, not only that, he had taken a stance that the President or his administration could take notice of and change that decision if they so desired. You can change policy but if someone just hates you, there really isn’t anything you can do.
I have opposed Obama since the middle of the first term. I write about business ethics and his stance on that issue has been disastrous. Millions of Americans, who had been misled about the prospects of home ownership, often by deliberate fraud, had their homes taken from them. The government failed to act to save them or prosecute the venal thieves who took the most valuable thing that these people would ever own in the lives. And besides overlooking these crimes, the government under Obama’s leadership, failed to use the criminal law to prosecute the banks for their crime.
I taught business ethics against a backdrop of the federal government of the United States taking the law and making the biggest corporate crimes in the history of the world, a matter punishable by fines, a cost of doing business that has resulted in nothing but a wave, a moving wall of wrong doing that could right now take the world into a second financial catastrophe. It is a dereliction of duty that I cannot forgive or forget. Instead of taking the opportunity to make the international banking system a safe bulwark for the wealth of peoples and nations, it is now an international casino wreaking havoc upon weaker nations and constantly searching for the next shill, the next big score, knowing with absolute certainly that if they make a mistake they will be rescued with public money and at worst penalized with a fine. They have taken a nation of law that was often imperfect and created a two tier system where the wealthy and well connected walk free no matter what they have done.
But, once again, I, like the cartoonist I mentioned earlier, have an actual reason to oppose the President. I oppose him on a policy basis. This is principled upon the idea that in a democracy, we can stand for different things.
I’m a business ethics writer. So, it is entirely appropriate to ask, what about business ethics am I trying to say?
Very simple, for a few hundred years, Western Civilization, in particular, the United States, has been conducting an experiment in whether or not people can rule themselves. Democracy is a difficult process and the American example has features that made it even more difficult: for instance, a bifurcated legislature and three part government beset by “checks and balances.” This form of government requires opposing parties to cooperate in at least a minimal manner for government to function. Unreasoning hatred makes this impossible.
And there is another factor, the Enlightenment. The founders believed that their dramatic compromises (they clearly understood the foolishness of the two house legislature) would be mitigated by the enlightenment values of knowledge and reason. This nation, its businesses, its corporations, its legal systems, ad infinitum is meant to operate in a thinking environment of reason and logic.
How do you talk about ethics and good decision making in regard to the Presidency or any other issue, when human reason is removed from the equation? If instead of talking about the facts, we just emote?
Don’t for a minute doubt the temptation to hate in business ethics. When you review the millions of Americans who have and will have their property stolen by banking institutions most commonly investment banks, it is difficult to write without emotion. The knowledge that conscious evil wrong doing is not only tolerated but rewarded by billions of dollars in salaries, stock shares and other benefits is difficult to take.
This is what I want to say. Business ethics cannot function in an environment of unthinking emotion. We can only find our way as a free people by thinking with reason and facts and only then acting.
I know that reason and logic are often slow and they are often tedious. They often lack the black and white certainty of 1940’s Western or the latest article in any of countless blogs but they are the means by which the best decisions can be made.
Last month, I had an unusual experience, a week with very few business ethic issues. For a brief few days, it was hard to find a topic to write about. But that brief interruption in a cascade of moral decrepitude is over.
This week we have ExxonMobil caught paying millions to climate deniers after promising to its shareholders not to. This week we had the publication on the Internet of the 542 page Hoffman Report. It would appear from the report that members, psychologists, cooperated with the government in the practice of torture and that senior members of the American Psychological Association crushed attempts at inquiry and accountability.
And then we have bird flu. For many years, it has been argued that factory farming is dangerous to food production in the United States because this grouping of enormous, unprecedented populations of animals in small spaces with little genetic diversity is a formula for disaster. Well, now we know for a fact that this is true. Forty-eight million birds are dead and many more are going to die. We are very lucky in that the outbreak has thus far been limited geographically but what would have happened if we had been less lucky? – A future without chickens?
This is a business ethics issue. If you are operating a business based on an unsustainable model, you are not being ethical. If you are operating a business that endangers a major portion of the food supply for nations or the planet as a whole, it would be ethical to not or to take steps to limit the damage.
Etc.
You get the idea. Throw in the Greek Crisis which I have written about here and here, and it has not been a good week for business ethics.
Sometimes, people infer that there is no such thing as business ethics and they point to the evidence of the daily headlines and published reports of business crime and stupidity.
But this isn’t true. Regularly there are stories of businesses sacrificing profit to do the right thing. There are stories of businesses that have held their employees even upper management liable for their crimes.
More importantly, there are tens of thousands of close or small corporate entities that have never and would never consider an illegal act and would shy away from the unethical. This includes most local banks and most professionals, doctors and lawyers.
We who struggle to encourage doing what is right by ethics and morality have not lost. If evil doings were pervasive in American markets, few would do business because without trust, capitalism does not function. For markets to work there must be a basic faith in fair and honest dealing.
Americans are a great and good people. It is just that the evil among us wield disproportionate influence in key industries. I realize that they have done catastrophic damage and these same people are protected from facing criminal and civil penalties by a government corruptly influenced by massive amounts of money. (Or should I say “corporate speech.”)
But they could not make enormous profits from a weak and villainous people. It is the very goodness, the basic humanity and hard work of the American people that gives the unethical and the immoral the opportunity to become rich.
We, the ethical and moral, are duty bound to struggle for what is right and true Victory is not inevitable. It never is. But that does not mean that the fight is pointless. Even in defeat, there is a glory in the fight well fought and a glory in having fought on the right side.
David Dayen wrote the quote from which I take my title. Here’s the line –
As a side note, some in the Greek government did in fact see this coming, if you believe former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. But to prepare for such sadistic behavior on the part of the central bank is akin to preparing for an ambush by a psychopath.
An Ambush by a Psychopath
An Ambush by a Psychopath
I think my title is entirely appropriate. What we have here is an assault on a nation’s sovereignty and integrity on the same scale as on a nation that lost a war. This more resembles a dictated peace to a conquered people than an economic agreement.
Let’s be absolutely clear. By the International Monetary Fund’s own research, the Greeks cannot pay their debt under this kind of plan. It isn’t possible.
This isn’t about money. You would have thought with all this talk about the financial crisis and the amounts of money being thrown about on this and that, not to mention the incredible savagery and just plain nastiness of a horde of editorial writers condemnation of the Greeks and their government, that this was about financial responsibility and the payment of loans. It’s not.
I’ve already established above that the IMF says this deal can’t work. I read a good part of that leaked report. Basically it says that the Eurozone’s terms are impacting the economy so dramatically, the Greeks are not going to be able to generate enough growth for rising income to make possible debt repayments in the amounts now contemplated. More bluntly, the economy is so badly damaged by austerity, that they will never be able to pay back the debt.
So, if it isn’t about money, what is it about? David Dayen has his point of view as follows:
None of the satellite countries in the German empire missed the message. Step out of line, try to reverse an austerity agenda that has brought recession, if not outright depression, to the countries forced into its maw, and you will be pulverized, humiliated, forced to grovel and beg forgiveness.
... Whole nations, states, counties and communities can get into financial trouble and if we do, who we will turn to for help? Banks, the IMF, or state imposed administrators, technocrats from business, banking and corporate law will be our only choices and what will they demand? You can see it right here, right now. This will be the prototype in the future for dealing with creditor governments, whatever their size. If we have a great a power differential like they have in Greece there will be no negotiations. You will accept what is offered to you and you will do it without question. And above all else, forget that democracy thing.
What is being implied her is that it is not the people that are sovereign; it is the international financial system of interlocking banks, finance ministers and multinational corporations.
David Dayen is angrier at Germany and with good reason. But I think the Germans are not so much imperialists in the traditional sense but modern neo-liberals who see reality in just one way, a world of “makers and takers.”
Just like in the United States, we’re not talking so much about money as we are talking about virtue, and a lack of virtue must be punished.
The Germans view themselves as moral arbiters punishing the unworthy. They are cheerfully forgetful about their banks part in the debacle, suffer incredible amnesia over other nations’ forgiveness of its debts in the past and have forgotten all about the profits made from Greece on German weapons’ sales (Remember the 130 Leopard 2A4 type tanks?)
And who lacks moral virtue more than anyone else? – The undisciplined mob, the people, the ones who keep the good honest virtuous bankers from their just deserts. You know, the people, the greedy ones that want retirement when they’re old and medicine when they’re sick and some form of government assistance when the “right” people tank the economy periodically.
The people of Greece got out of line. They weren’t virtuous. When they were told to go without jobs, without benefits, etc. etc., they got mad and their anger translated into votes. How dare they?
David Dayen says this is a warning to other members of the European Community. He is right and wrong on this point. He is right in that the Europeans are being sent a message but wrong about where the message is really intended.
It’s for all of us, certainly, the towns, counties, cities and states of this United States. We are all being warned. We are being told where real power lies and that obedience is expected.
James Pilant
An Ambush by a Psychopath
The rise and fall of the German Empire: What Greece’s crippling bailout deal reveals about the future of Europe – Salon.com
(As a side note, some in the Greek government did in fact see this coming, if you believe former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. But to prepare for such sadistic behavior on the part of the central bank is akin to preparing for an ambush by a psychopath. There’s not much for one to do.)
None of the satellite countries in the German empire missed the message. Step out of line, try to reverse an austerity agenda that has brought recession, if not outright depression, to the countries forced into its maw, and you will be pulverized, humiliated, forced to grovel and beg forgiveness.
One of the problems we who teach business ethics have to deal with is the idea that there is a separation between business ethics and personal ethics. I’m sure everyone in the field has dealt with students (and business people) who believe that they should leave their ethics at the door when they go to work. That this belief is common is most unfortunate and produces a great deal of evil. The idea of two kinds of ethics is the worst kind of hypocrisy. And this is because what is basically being said here is that “I am a good person just so long as I am not at work.” I can’t find much comfort or consistency in having two codes of morality.
And what does this say about business in this nation? That this is a common belief does not speak well of the ethics of American business. The idea of a separate set of ethics strongly indicates diminished concern for ethics and a predilection for what is called in the law, sharp practice, taking advantage instead of fair dealing. Yet, how often have you heard the phrase, “It’s just business.” And that always means the same thing, “I wouldn’t normally make this decision but we are in the world of business and that’s what is done here.”
The Ethics Sage
The Ethics Sage strongly believes that we should live by a common ethical code, a code we practice both in and outside the workplace. So do I.
The quote below is an excerpt from The Ethics Sage’s latest work. It can found here. As always I recommend that you read the full article and subscribe. His work is well worth reading.
Are there two standards of behavior — one for the workplace and one in personal life?
…
We all should live life under a set of values that guide our actions, whether at home or on the job. Ethically, you can’t justify lying in the workplace for the “greater good” while never doing that at home. Ethics is not like a spigot we can turn on and turn off. We are what we do in life and ethical people always strive to do the right thing without compromising one’s values or beliefs. It’s not an easy standard to live up to all the time.
Ethics is prescriptive and not descriptive. It is an ideal that we all should strive to achieve — to be better people and contribute to the betterment of society. It is not about how we do behave but is about how we should behave. No one is perfect all of the time. Ethical people make mistakes. In such cases, whether in business or in one’s personal life, the best way to handle the situation is to admit your mistake right away — don’t cover it up — promise never to do it again. And then follow through by acting ethically in the future.
Business executives and business owners need to realize that there can be no compromises when it comes to ethics, and there are no easy shortcuts to success. Ethics need to be cultivated throughout the organization. Top management needs to set an ethical tone at the top. Actions must match words. Managers who believe this to be the case and act accordingly set the stage for the ethical leadership that is so important in organizations today.
One of the subjects dealt with in my blogging is free market fundamentalism, a subject intertwined with Neo-Liberalism. What does this have to do with business ethics? These philosophies have real impacts on policy across the glove. They are often used to determine economic decisions for entire nations and corporations. If we as business ethics teachers stay away from the big questions because it is less controversial and easier to deal with the small, what kind of people are we?
Micro Business Ethics
It seems to me obvious that these philosophies are embedded in business interests across the globe. They are spread and encouraged by well financed think tanks, lobbyists and political contributions. This belief system practices wage discipline, privatization, the destruction of public services and the replacement of democratic institutions by business “experts.” Considering these facts, business philosophy should and must be an area of concern for business ethics. When a school board is superseded to allow an appointed body to defund public schools and create a parallel charter school system, democracy has been thwarted. When once well paid workers are reduced to food stamps and penury, we should discuss whether the power of business is being used for good or evil.
Much of the writing of traditional business ethics concerns the individual confronted with intellectual dilemma. I call this Micro Business Ethics. I’ve read textbooks where the focus was heavily aimed at this part of the field. For instance, each chapter opened up with an ethical question for an employee in business or corporation. More commonly, textbooks have sections dealing with individual ethics, organizational ethics and business philosophy, although I have one almost totally devoted to larger business philosophy and questions of ethics both national and international.
And all of these textbooks are labeled “Business Ethics.”
Why don’t we borrow from the field of economics? According to Wikipedia microeconomics “studies the behavior of individuals and small impacting organizations in making decisions.” That sounds like a good definition of Micro Business Ethics. How about adding a macro for the larger problems?
I would define macro-economics as dealing with organizations larger than “close” corporations or sole proprietorships such as national and multi-national corporations up to international organization like the International Monetary Fund and including nation states like Greece. But instead of dividing the field of business ethics into two parts, I can’t help be feel that doctrine and philosophy need their own area of concentration which I would call simple business philosophy.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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