Abstract
Based on the general ethical approaches and the rationality aspects discussed in previous chapters, this chapter zooms into the specific ethical challenges of different corporate stakeholders and influencing groups. In particular—and starting with—consumers play a dominant role in business ethics even though they may only indirectly (but ultimately) influence what and how goods and services are produced, offered, and consumed. Producers’ ethics in the long run is derived by the consumers’ demand and need to reflect four different dimensions that are addressed here. The jobholders’ (including employees, but not limited to this group) ethical responsibilities are elaborated with some particular focus examples, e.g., specifics on labor lease pose an ethical risk regarding exploitation of the social security systems. Reflecting the ethical aspects to look after as investor, it will be shown how an increased awareness of “looking beyond economic performance” led to a multitude of initiatives trying to capture the “added value” of a company value beyond the balance sheet. Although this so-called impact investment, which includes ESG aspects of corporations’ performance beyond the pure economic results, experiences increasing attention as consequences of climate change, their most significant shortcomings are illustrated as well.
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Notes
- 1.
Own analysis based on Statista data on organic food consumption, total meat consumption, and organic meat production. In 2018, the share of organic food was 5.5%. Due to the primary justification to buy organic for the benefit of animal welfare, the actual organic consumption share is likely to be much higher.
- 2.
Own evaluation based on data according to (BMG 2020).
- 3.
Share of wallet is the amount of annual spend of a particular customer for a specific group of products or services. A low share of wallet a producer A has with customer B, e.g., 10%, would suggest that the producer A has still a high potential to increase the future spent of customer B with A, instead of spending the funds with another supplier.
- 4.
Own calculation based on (BVI 2020).
- 5.
According to FNG (2019), there is an increase from 2014 to 2018 of 3.5 times.
- 6.
https://de.statista.com/outlook/337/137/robo-advisors/deutschland (accessed 07.08.2020).
- 7.
Tobin’s Q is a financial ratio that indicates if a corporation or even an entire market is under-(0–1) or overpriced (>1): basically calculated as the total market value divided by the total asset (or replacement value) of a specific corporation or even markets.
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Vieweg, S.H. (2021). Business Ethics. In: Vieweg, S.H. (eds) AI for the Good. Management for Professionals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66913-3_3
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