www.allitebooks.com FACING PUBLIC INTEREST www.allitebooks.com Issues in Business Ethics VOLUME Series Editors Brian Harvey, Manchester Business School, U.K Patricia Werhane, University of Virginia, USA Editorial Board Brenda Almond, University of Hull, Hull, U.K Antonio Argandona, IESE, Barcelona, Spain William C Frederick, University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A Georges Enderle, University of Notre Dame, U.S.A Norman E Bowie, University of Minnesota, U.S.A Henk van Luijk, Nijenrode, Netherlands School of Business, Breukelen, The Netherlands Horst Steinmann, University ofErlangen-Nurnberg, Nürnberg, Germany The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume www.allitebooks.com Facing Public Interest The Ethical Challenge to Business Policy and Corporate Communication s editedby P E T ER U L R I C H Chair of BusinessEthics, Director of the Institute for BusinessEthics, University of St Gallen, St Gallen, Switzerland and C H A R L E S S A R A S IN Institute for BusinessEthics, University of St Gallen, St Gallen, Switzerland W SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA , B.V www.allitebooks.com A C L P Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress I S B N 978-0-7923-3634-1 I S B N 978-94-011-0399-2 (eBook) D O I 10.1007/978-94-011-0399-2 Printed on acid-free paper A l l Rights Reserved © 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers i n 1995 Softcover reprint o f the hardcover 1st edition 1995 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner www.allitebooks.com PREFACE This volume has grown out of the seventh conference of the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN) at the University of St Gallen from September 14-16, 1994 On behalf of EBEN, the Institut for Wirtschaftsethik (Institute for Business Ethics) at the University of St Gallen has initiated and organized this international conference together with REs PUBUCA - Association for Responsibility in Business, a group of Swiss entrepreneurs and managers who commit themselves to promoting an ethically based way of doing business Three other academic institutes cooperated in the organizing body of the conference: the Institute for Social Ethics and the Institute for Research in Business Administration, both at the University of Zurich, and the Institute for Research in Marketing and Distribution at the University of St Gallen Last not least, the conference was effectively supported by the Swiss Federation of Commerce and Industry, and by the former President of the Swiss National Assembly, Mr Ulrich Bremi The name of the association «Res Publica» corresponds with the guiding idea of the EBEN Conference '94 and also of this book: Nowadays, doing business is never just a «private» matter but in many ways a «public affair.» Free enterprise has to serve public purposes and to be accountable to the general public as far as the «public cause» (res publica) is affected by the implications and outcomes of business activities In short: Responsible business of today means Facing Public Interest Under this general topic, the conference aimed - first, at lighting up advanced conceptual ideas of how business policy and