Ethical Reasoning in Global Decision-Making

The leading traditions of Western ethical thought offer an immense collection of concepts and distinctions for thinking about how to make professional and personal decisions across any walk of life. In this chapter we consider how to draw from this vast terrain to provide a set of practical ethical guidelines for global business decision-making. Our aim is not to provide an historical survey of ethics but to identify some of the most useful ideas and distinctions across various ethical traditions that have survived the test of time and to suggest adaptable practical recommendations. We present four digestible ethical guidelines to bridge the theoretical traditions with the everyday world of time-sensitive business decision-making. These guidelines have versatile applications across an array of business applications and can also be useful for policymakers and decision-makers in not-for-profit organizations.