Are Codes of Business Ethics Ethical?

6 Pages Posted: 20 Dec 2018

See all articles by Willy Tadjudje

Willy Tadjudje

Catholic University of Louvain (UCL)

Clement Labi

Universite du Luxembourg, Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance

Date Written: November 20, 2018

Abstract

In response to a quickly evolving legal environment and more generally to changing conceptions about the role and responsibilities of the corporation and its executives, many firms have adopted codes of ethics whose legal relevance is uncertain, and whose relation to actual ethics is largely problematic. First, it is necessary to analyze the theoretical model of these codes, as business environments tend to be assessed in terms of “business ethics”, which is conceptually difficult not to discount, since ethics should possess a universalist vocation, hence the necessity to seek whether there could be a variety of ethics which could bear the same validity. More generally, can individuals (or corporations) bestow upon themselves any set of chosen ethical rules? We propose that ethical codes actually mimic and anticipate what legislators or judges have (or will have) considered as ethical behaviors. Since the law is itself an imitation of ethical rules, codes of business ethics are therefore imitations of imitations. The works of Kant and Levinas, in particular, will serve as points of reference.

Keywords: ethics, business ethics, ethical codes, corporate governance

Suggested Citation

Tadjudje, Willy and Labi, Clement, Are Codes of Business Ethics Ethical? (November 20, 2018). RAIS Conference Proceedings - The 11th International RAIS Conference on Social Sciences, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3303391 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3303391

Willy Tadjudje (Contact Author)

Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) ( email )

Place Montesquieu, 3
Louvain-la-Neuve, 1348
Belgium

Clement Labi

Universite du Luxembourg, Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance ( email )

162a, avenue de la Faïencerie
Luxembourg-Limpertsberg
Luxembourg

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