Just Ethical Business

It is now recognised that many governance problems in which global business has been implicated have arisen because of globalisation and can only be addressed by global solutions. It must also be recognized, Sampford argues, that governance problems at the national level contribute to governance problems and the global level and vice versa.

This book provides an integrated set of perspectives on the roles of business in the ethical, social, political, economic and physical environments in which it operates globally, bringing together more than twenty years of Professor Sampford’s thoughts and analysis. The book synthesises a set of consistent themes of prevailing relevance to business, with a detailed commentary on the place of business in past, current and future global public policy debates, from the best means of pricing carbon to the defining tax and welfare quandaries facing America, Europe and Asia. Its core thesis and recurring thematic crux is that – like many other problems of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries – global problems of business conduct can only be addressed by a combination of legal regulation, ethical standard setting and institutional design. The book argues that, from ratings agencies, to corporations, to superannuation funds, to banks, to governments and multilateral agencies, institutions must be redesigned to increase the probability that they will use the power entrusted in them to serve the public interest in the way they claim.

The book will be of interest to academic researchers and advanced students across the governance disciplines including law, economics and finance, politics, ethics and philosophy; to corporate governance theorists and practitioners, business executives and boards of private and public companies; to non-government organisations that interact with business globally; to executives of government departments and agencies; and to university, government and corporate libraries.