This is an issue about the basic orientation of business ethics teaching.

Does it, as is perhaps usually assumed of business studies subjects, simply exist to equip present and future managers with the intellectual tools for the job of management? Or does it have a wider role: addressing not just the concerns of managers but those of society as well?

What leads to the latter assumption (and this may well be what distinguishes the teaching of business ethics from the teaching of other subjects within business studies) is the fact that business ethics has a defining concern with the ethical. This means, it can be argued, that business ethics has to consider not just the attainment of the ordinary sort of commercial objectives linked to profitability but also, as its overriding concern, attainment of the wider social good.

Hence, it looks at businesses not just from the viewpoint of those running them but all those affected by how they are run. Moreover, it can be further argued, business ethics connects the two viewpoints not simply in terms of how those running businesses should respond to these wider constituencies but how those wider constituencies should require businesses to be run (see issue 8).

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