Are Codes of Business Ethics Ethical?

Willy Tadjudje () and Clément Labi ()
Additional contact information
Willy Tadjudje: University of Luxembourg
Clément Labi: University of Luxembourg

Scientia Moralitas Journal, 2018, vol. 3, issue 2, 62-73

Abstract: In response to a quickly evolving legal environment and more generally to changing conceptions about the role and responsibilities of the corporation and its executives, many firms have adopted codes of ethics whose legal relevance is uncertain, and whose relation to actual ethics is largely problematic. First, it is necessary to analyze the theoretical model of these codes, as business environments tend to be assessed in terms of “business ethics†, which is conceptually difficult not to discount, since ethics should possess a universalist vocation, hence the necessity to seek whether there could be a variety of ethics which could bear the same validity. More generally, can individuals (or corporations) bestow upon themselves any set of chosen ethical rules? We propose that ethical codes actually mimic and anticipate what legislators or judges have (or will have) considered as ethical behaviors. Since the law is itself an imitation of ethical rules, codes of business ethics are therefore imitations of imitations. The works of Kant and Levinas, in particular, will serve as points of reference.

Keywords: ethics; business ethics; ethical codes; corporate governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://scientiamoralitas.com/index.php/sm/article/view/60/43 (application/pdf)
http://scientiamoralitas.com/index.php/sm/article/download/60/43 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:smo:journl:v:3:y:2018:i:2:p:62-73

Access Statistics for this article

Scientia Moralitas Journal is currently edited by Ioan-Gheorghe Rotaru

More articles in Scientia Moralitas Journal from Scientia Moralitas, Research Institute
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Eduard David ().