University of Piraeus. International Strategic Management Association
Abstract
The success of modern business is apparent, but recently there is much
concern in the business-and-society literature and in the general press on whether
business fulfils its social role responsibly. Business ethics, corporate social
responsibility and corporate governance movements have been developed in recent
decades as responses to a growing sense of corporate wrongdoing. This paper
attempts to explain why the three movements seem yet to have generated little in the
form of widely accepted prescriptions for improvement of business behaviour to the
satisfaction of the “constituents” of business, i.e. the major stakeholders. Without
denying the usefulness of any of the three movements, the paper suggests that there
are weaknesses in all three, especially concerning the way they conceive modern
business operation. To this end business pluralism, responsive codes of practice
and re-examination of the assumptions (conditions) of business operation could be
helpful.peer-reviewe