This is a systematic evaluation of the main arguments for and against the market as an instrument of social organization, balancing efficiency and justice . It links the distinctive approaches of philosophy and economics to this evaluation.

In this collection of provocative essays, Joseph Heath provides a compelling new framework for thinking about the moral obligations that private actors in a market economy have toward each other and to society. In a sharp break with traditional approaches to business ethics, Heath argues that the basic principles of corporate social responsibility are already implicit in the institutional norms that structure both marketplace competition and the modern business corporation. In four new and nine previously published essays, Heath articulates the foundations of a "market failures" approach to business ethics. Rather than bringing moral concerns to bear upon economic activity as a set of foreign or externally imposed constraints, this approach seeks to articulate a robust conception of business ethics derived solely from the basic normative justification for capitalism. The result is a unified theory of business ethics, corporate law, economic regulation, and the welfare state, which offers a reconstruction of the central normative preoccupations in each area that is consistent across all four domains. Beyond the core theory, Heath offers new insights on a wide range of topics in economics and philosophy, from agency theory and risk management to social cooperation and the transaction cost theory of the firm.

Morality and the Market is a business ethics anthology unlike any other. The book covers the foundations of markets, their operations, and their effects by incorporating most traditional business ethics topics while introducing new ones as well. The result is a text with genuine diversity of opinion, philosophical depth, and breadth of topic, accompanied throughout by a knowledgeable and sympathetic account of the traditional issues in business ethics.Morality and the Market places special and distinctive emphasis on virtue and its applicability to the contexts of commerce. Each of the traditional topics of business ethics is related to particular virtues. For example, the virtue of honesty is related to advertising and sales; integrity is related to whistle-blowing; social responsibility is related to business profit; and courage is related to entrepreneurship. Morality and the Market explores the moral foundations of markets, their moral consequences, and considers the effects of commerce on the arts, culture, the environment, and technological progress.

This book introduces a study of ethics and values to develop a deeper understanding of markets, business, and economic life. Its distinctive feature is its thorough integration across personal and institutional perspectives; across applied ethics and political philosophy; and across philosophy, business, and economics. Part 1 studies markets, property rights, and law, and introduces normative theories with many applications. Part 2 examines the purpose of corporations and their responsibilities. Parts 3 and 4 analyze business and economic life through the ethics and values of welfare and efficiency, liberty, rights, equality, desert, personal character, community, and the common good. This second edition maintains the strengths of the first edition—short, digestible chapters and engaging writing that explains challenging ideas clearly. The material is user-friendly, with an emphasis on a strong theoretical core. Easily adaptable to the instructor’s teaching, the chapters are separable and can be shaped to the interests of the instructor with suggested course outlines and flexible application to case studies. This text is designed both for coursework in business ethics, as well as interdisciplinary programs in philosophy, politics, economics, and law. This second edition: revises presentation of eight normative theories, with increased emphasis on linksto business and economic life; incorporates recent scholarship on shareholder/stakeholder debates about the purpose of corporations, bringing this important topic up to date; includes a new, streamlined preface that provides a quick overview of the book before smoothly guiding the reader to the first chapter; uses updated examples and applications; revamps a useful appendix, including enhancing the popular primer on ethics; includes Key Terms, Discussion Questions, Biographies, and Lists of Further Readings at the end of each chapter; includes a new ending chapter on the value of an ethical life.

Promotes a deeper understanding of markets, corporate responsibility and business ethics Markets, Ethics, and Business Ethics provides an introductory discussion on basic, challenging concepts of business ethics: markets, property rights, law, and corporations.This title presents a balance of institutional perspectives and the concrete decisions people make within those institutions. The text studies the rules and incentives of a business system as well as the ethical decisions that people confront within their roles as consumers, investors, managers, owners, employees, and citizens. MySearchLab is a part of the Scalet program. Research and writing tools, including access to academic journals, help students explore ethics in even greater depth. To provide students with flexibility, students can download the eText to a tablet using the free Pearson eText app. Learning Goals Upon completing this book, readers should be able to: Assess arguments that respond to each other by either criticizing what has gone before or by developing themes in alternative ways.Recog Debate any given topic by considering the structure of the best competing arguments for any given position Critically assess leading controversies in business ethics NOTE: MySearchLab does not come automatically packaged with this text. To purchase the text with MySearchLab, order the package ISBN: 0205887759 / 9780205887750 Markets, Ethics, and Business Ethics Plus MySearchLab with eText -- Access Card Package Package consists of: 0205239927 / 9780205239924 MySearchLab with Pearson eText -- Valuepack Access Card 0205785840 / 9780205785841 Markets, Ethics, and Business Ethics

The Church and the Market is a vigorous and lively defense of the market economy and a withering attack on all forms of state intervention. It covers labor unions, monopoly, money and banking, business cycles, interest, usury, and much more. Although it makes a particular point of noting the moral arguments of the market economy and that Catholics are of course perfectly at liberty to support it, its audience is much broader than Catholics alone. Readers of all religious traditions and none at all have praised The Church and the Market, first-place winner in the 2006 Templeton Enterprise Awards, as one of the most compelling and persuasive defenses of capitalism against its critics ever written.

Comprising cutting-edge work on the state of social economics today, this theoretically diverse book includes strong emphasis on the role of ethics, morality, identity, and society in economic theorizing. Much existing economic theory overlooks ethics. Rather than situating the market and values at separate extremes of a continuum, Ethics and the Market contends that the two are necessarily and intimately related. This volume brings together some of the best work in the social economics tradition, with strong contributions and pedagogy, and a cross-national blend of economics, philosophy, and policy. The contributors embed the economic within the social, rather than viewing 'the economy' and 'society' as separable spheres of life activity, and in so doing, three key themes are illuminated, corresponding to the volume's tripartite structure: Morality and Markets Redefining the Boundaries of Economics Social Economics in Transition. Ethics and the Market illuminates the diverse and dynamic theoretical approaches that are employed in social economics, reflecting on their continuously evolving relationship with neoclassical economics. Taking an innovative approach, this integrative book challenges traditional ways of thinking, and will prove vital reading for students and academics in the fields of Economics, Sociology, Gender Studies, and Public Policy.