I have a chapter forthcoming in this new volume:
CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance: Building New Bridges between Business and Society
Editors: Hualiang Lu (Nanjing, China), René Schmidpeter (Cologne, Germany), Nicholas Capaldi (New Orleans, USA), Liangrong Zu, (Turin, Italy)
Publisher: Springer Books.
Date: 2016
Abstract:
Entrepreneurship’s Relationship to CSR (Prof. Dr. Stephen R.C. Hicks)
This chapter rethinks the start of business ethics. The author agrees that the Corporate Social Responsibility model of business ethics has been a leading paradigm. But the author notices that CSR practitioners usually take large firms as representative of business and address their ethical issues; this, he believes, leads to over-generalizing. But most people do not work in mid-to-large corporations; rather, they are sole proprietors, in a partnership, in a family firm, or in an entrepreneurial venture. Also, every large corporation began as an entrepreneurial venture. Therefore, the author argues that business ethics should begin where business begins. In other words, business ethics begins with entrepreneurship. The author first situates ethics in an entrepreneurial context to identify the core values, virtues, and vices of business. Then he addresses how those ethical issues scale as the business succeeds or fails at growing into large corporation.
[More information forthcoming upon publication.]