How Personal Integrity Leads to Corporate Success

A Better Way to Think About Business: How Personal Integrity Leads to Corporate Success

By Robert C. Solomon. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 145 pages, hard cover, $23.50.

Solomon is the Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. A well-known author of numerous books on business ethics, he has more than twenty years of consulting experience in ethics with major corporations.

In the first part, Solomon examines the impediments to developing an ethos of integrity and virtue in business. Noteworthy among these impediments are the faulty metaphors, myths, and heroes that predominate in the depiction of business today.

In the second part of his book, Solomon dwells on the necessity of integrity in business life. He employs an Aristotelian approach to business ethics, stressing that businesses, like individuals, are members of a community. Corporations can therefore be conceived of as communities operating within the boundaries of the larger societal community. Business is thus fundamentally a human and social enterprise with obligations that extend well beyond stockholders. Communal obligations become even more relevant in an era of global and multinational corporations with the power to exert enormous influence over their stakeholders.

The third part of the book consists of an exhaustive, working catalog of virtues in business. The catalog serves as a handy reference tool for managers.

The book serves as a useful and practical guide for managers who wish to see how important ethics and integrity can be to business success. The book would also make an excellent supplementary text for courses in business ethics and the social responsibility of businesses.

Source:

A Better Way to Think About Business: How Personal Integrity Leads to Corporate Success
Eileen P Kelly. The Academy of Management Executive. Briarcliff Manor: May 2000. Vol. 14, Iss. 2; pg. 127, 2 pgs