Business Ethics Profs’ Favourite Articles to Teach

In late 2014, we conducted an informal survey of professors who teach Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Corporate Citizenship classes. We asked them to tell us the 3 readings they most like to assign as readings in their classes. Several dozen professors responded. The list is below. There was effectively no overlap — that is, there was almost no consensus regarding “the” papers that needed to be taught. Several papers received 2 votes each, but none received more than that. A few specific authors, though (e.g., Boatright, Carroll, and Coase) each made multiple appearances. The result is not a highly-scientific survey, but it does give a sense of the sorts of things professors in the field are teaching.

Here are the papers that professors told us they love:

(Note: some of the links below just lead to abstracts and full bibliographical information. Others lead to full PDF articles.)

• Agle, B., Mitchell, R. & Sonnefeld, J. “Who matters to CEOs? An investigation of stakeholder attributes and salience, corporate performance and CEO values”
• Anand, V., Ashforth, B. E. & Joshi, M. “Business as usual: The acceptance and perpetuation of corruption in organisations”
• Anderson, E. “Is women’s labor a commodity?”
• Ariely, D “Why we lie”
• Arnold, D. & Bowie, N. “Sweatshops and Respect for Persons”
• Bandura, A., Caprara, G. V. & Zsolnai, L. “Corporate Transgressions through Moral Disengagement”
• Boatright, J. R. “Ethics and corporate governance”
  • —–. “What’s wrong – and what’s right – with Stakeholder management”
  • —–. “Rent-seeking in a market with morality”
• Brenkert, G. “Private Corporations and Public Welfare”
• Brunnermeier, M. K. “Deciphering the liquidity and credit crunch 2007-08”
• Carroll, A. B. “In search of the moral manager”
  • —–. “The Pyramid of Corporate Social Responsibility: Toward the Moral Management of Organizational Stakeholders”
  • —–. “A Three Dimensional Conceptual Model of Corporate Social Performance”
  • —–. “The Four Faces of Corporate Citizenship”
• Coase, R. H. “The nature of the firm”
  • —–. “Adam Smith’s View of Man”
• Cooke, R. A., Young, E. C. “Mergers from an ethical perspective”
• Crouch, C. “Modelling the Firm in its Market and Organizational Environment: Methodologies for Studying Corporate Social Responsibility”
• DeBow, M. E. “The Ethics of Rent-Seeking?: A new perspective on corporate social responsibility.”
• Dodd, E. M. “For whom are corporate managers trustees?”
• Donaldson & Preston “The stakeholder theory of the corporation: concepts, evidence, and implications”
• Dunfee, T. W. “Do Firms with Unique Competencies for Rescuing Victims of Human Catastrophes Have Special Obligations?”
• Easterbrook & Fischel “The corporate contract”
• Epstein, R. A. “In defense of the contract at will”
• Freiman, C. “Why Be Immoral?”
• Gauthier, D. “No need for morality: the case of the competitive market”
• Ghoshal, S. “Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices”
• Gini, A. “Moral Leadership: An overview”
• Gioia, D. A. “Pinto Fires and Personal Ethics: a script analysis of missed opportunities.”
• Goodpaster, K. E. “Business Ethics: Two Moral Provisos”
• Goodpaster, K. E. “Tenacity: The American Pursuit of Corporate Responsibility”
• Hardin, G “The Tragedy of the Commons”
• Harris, J. D. & Freeman, R. E “The Impossibility of the Separation Thesis”
• Hayek, F. A. “The Use of Knowledge in Society”
• Heath, J. “A Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics.”
  • —–. “Business ethics without stakeholders”
  • —–. “An adversarial ethic for business: or when Sun-Tzu met the stakeholder”
• Hursthouse, R. “Virtue theory and abortion”
• Langseth, P., Stapenhurst, R. & Pope, J. “The role of a national integrity system in fighting corruption”
• Machan, T. “Advertising: The Whole Truth or Only Some of the Truth”
• Maitland, I. “The Great Non Debate Over International Sweatshops”
• Marcoux, A. “Much Ado About Price Discrimination”
• Martin, D. “The contained-rivalry requirement and a “triple feature” program for business ethics”
• Matten, D. & Moon, J. “Implicit and Explicit CSR: A Conceptual Framework for a Comparative Understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility”
• McCracken, J., Martin, W.  & Shaw, B. “Virtue Ethics and The Parable of the Sadhu”
• Moriarty, J. “Business Ethics: An Overview”
• Paine, L.S. “Children as Consumers: An Ethical Evaluation of Children’s Television Advertising.”
• Post, Preston & Sachs “Managing the Extended Enterprise: The New Stakeholder View”
• Schwartz, M. S. & Carroll, A B “Integrating and Unifying Competing and Complementary Frameworks: The search for a common core in the business and society field”
• Sekerka, L. E. “Organizational ethics education and training: A review of best practices and their application”
  • —–. “Compliance as a subtle precursor to ethical corrosion: A strength-based approach as a way forward”
  • —–.“Facing ethical challenges in the workplace: Conceptualizing and measuring professional moral courage.”
• Sen, A. “Does business ethics make economic sense”
• Shacklock, A. H. “Courage, Compromise or Capitulation: Human Resource Practitioners Under Duress.”
  • —–. “Dimensions and Types of Ethical Climate within Public Sector Human Resource Management.”
• Singer, P. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”
• Stout, L. A. “Bad and Not-so-Bad Arguments for Shareholder Primacy.”
• Trevino, L. K., Hartman, L. P. & Brown, M. “Moral person and moral manager: how executives develop a reputation for ethical leadership”
• Tullock, G. “Adam Smith and the Prisoner’s Dilemma”
• Velasquez, M., Moberg, D. J., & Cavanagh, G. F. “Organizational statesmanship and dirty politics: Ethical guidelines for the organizational politician”
• Waters, J. A. “Catch 20.5: Corporate Morality as an Organizational Phenomenon.”
• Williamson, O. E. “The economics of organization: the transaction cost approach”
• Zwolinski, M. “Sweatshops, Choice, and Exploitation”