Ethics, Misconduct and the Financial Services Industry: Towards a Theory of Moral Business

This book explores how ethics and the moral context of business have evolved historically in inf luential management theories and concepts. It looks at how managerial thought accommodates morality, values, and ethics and demonstrates the emerging patterns of ethical conduct to illustrate how moral aspects of management and organizational practice can become peripheral. The author examines a diverse range of data sources such as the most seminal books in management and academic papers published in the mainstream academic literature. The readings selected in the process are subject to critical analysis and are complemented by an exploratory study of the financial services industry, based on semistructured in-depth interviews. The uniqueness of the proposed approach comes first from the consolidation of many perspectives such as management, organization studies, and business anthropology rather than focusing on one particular subdiscipline; second, from using a mixed methodology, combining literature reviews with empirical, exploratory research based on interviews; and third from including a narrative context in the analysis and proposed future theory framework. This book will appeal to students, researchers, and scholars who teach ethics in the fields of economics or business. It is useful for advancing theory and research on moral management and as a resource for management practitioners looking to create business practices fostering moral sensitivity. Those interested in setting future development directions may also find the proposed consolidation of theoretical and empirical evidence valuable for the design of future policies.