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Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education pp 139–150Cite as

Business Ethics and Sustainable Development

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Definition

Ethics is the study of human behavior, encompassing the rational dimension of morality, which “is concerned with the norms, values and beliefs embedded in social processes which define right and wrong for an individual community” (Crane and Matten 2004:11). When such principles, as postulated by Steiner and Steiner (2003), are entrenched in business operations, often in codified or written form (Harris 2002), these fall under the term “business ethics.” This refers to when business actions, situations, activities, and decisions at an individual or corporate level are taken with moral adequacy being the main crux (Goodpaster 1998; Crane and Matten 2010:5).

Introduction

Even though the phrase Good ethics is good business has gained reconnaissance in corporate discourse, it should not be considered as a panacea applied universally and utopically in each and every context to justify its implementation. As Singer (2018) states, the legal and political context, which determines...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Clinton Cassar

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  1. Clinton Cassar
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Correspondence to Clinton Cassar .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Life Sciences, World Sustainable Development Research and Transfer Centre, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany

    Walter Leal Filho

Section Editor information

  1. University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Mark C. Mifsud

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Cassar, C. (2019). Business Ethics and Sustainable Development. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11352-0_39

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