The role of business ethics as academic discipline

Business ethics attracted public attention with the degradation of values at the end of the 1970s and it became an academic discipline in the early 1980s. White collar delinquency has proved to be a worrying phenomenon, be it fiscal fraud, eluding the law or fraudulent use of unlicensed IT programs. Ethics has appeared as a natural consequence of modernity and out of the conviction that economic liberalism needs “breaks”. A possible lack of these “breaks” would cause serious damage. As Rousseau stated, Romans practiced virtue for a long time, yet when they started to study it all was lost. The same may be said about business ethics. At present, company ethical issues are so complex and imply such contradictory parameters that idealism should be put into a perfect balance with pragmatism. Business ethics is the basis for the formation of responsible behaviours, it projects a sense of justice and it builds the company’s reputation. It is a way to make the personnel and the clients loyal and it presupposes complying to the law and respecting various norms, being the basis of any type of business.