Cosmopolitan Business Ethics ─ Towards a Global Ethos of Management

In Cosmopolitan Business Ethics: Towards a Global Philosophy of Management, Jacob Dahl Rendtorff, maps the concept of global business ethics, related to sustainability and corporate governance, via an examination of the major theories of business ethics and the philosophy of management. The book is based on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the European tradition, which is applied as the foundation for the analysis of the contemporary European and Anglo-American debate on business ethics, in order to formulate an up-to-date theory of global business ethics. The book will compare the different schools of business ethics, corporate citizenship and the philosophy of management and will address the modern-day issues of sustainability, business and human rights, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder management and corporate governance, offering insights on how to deal with these international challenges of global economics, the development and protection of human rights and the environment (climate change). This book proposes a decision-making model for Cosmopolitan business ethics as the foundation of management and leadership in dealing with the complexities of globalisation. The case-studies will address the efforts of businesses to work with global and cosmopolitan business ethics at the levels of maintaining corporate integrity. Both the theoretical argument and case-studies presented in the book are supplemented with interviews with notable business ethicists, philosophers of management, business managers and public policy-makers.

Jacob Dahl Rendtorff is Senior Associate Professor of Responsibility, Ethics and Legitimacy of Corporations at the Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies at Roskilde University, Denmark. He is also part-time Professor of Philosophy of Management at the department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School and a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Global Ethics at the University of Tubingen. Rendtorff is director of the Scandinavian section of EBEN (European Business Ethics Network), a member of the Academy of management and European Editor of the journal of business ethics education. He has been a visiting professor at universities in Europe and the United States and has published several books.