Deontology is quite promising for the field of business ethics, and this book serves as a good introduction.

This a major new work in business ethics by one of the leaders in the field. Many people who write about business ethics tend to ignore the great traditions of ethics that should serve as the foundation for any work in applied ethics. Bucking this trend, Bowie applies Kantian moral principles to business and derives a series of well reasoned conclusions about the moral obligations of businesspersons. The work is noteworthy for its attention to recent Kant scholarship and for the clarity and accessibility of its writing. A superlative work.

Simon and Bowie do provide a basic sketch of philosophy which is particularly relevant to LD debate. what they do not do is provide the most up to date, ardent, or quotable defense of any of them. I would reccommend Grady's Dictionary of Philosophical Quotations or Singer's overview of ethics much more highly for any debater who aspires to more than mere mediocrity. In the world of debate, this is the huge survey lecture course taught by a barely qualified TA. Those with intellect and motivation can do much better and needn't waste their money and confine their minds. Besides, LD is outgrowing this outmoded paradigm anyway--just read the LD-L if you wont take the word of a national circuit debater.

High school debate students who are just starting out would be well served to pick up a copy of this book. It is a terrific background source for a wide variety of philosophical concepts that are often used in competitive Lincoln-Douglas debate. It is important not to use this book as a primary source of evidence, but merely as a text to gain understanding of the philosophy in the vernacular. In conjunction with Scott Robinson's "L-D Road Guide", this book is a terrific tool for novice debaters.

If you want to get deep in your knowledge of philosophy, get this book. I bought it for my high school students.

This book proved to be a great chronical of government and the ethics of it's representatives. The conglomeration of authors brings a more rounded effect to the book, and gives the reader a better understanding on the subject. Every American citizen should be required to read this book because it important to every day life.

I teach business ethics at the college level, and have found Ethical Theory and Business to be very helpful. Basically, B and B attempt to do three things. First, they offer an introductory essay, covering some of the main distinctions in both meta-ethics (e. g. whether morality is objective or subjective) and normative ethics. This essay is the weakest part of the book, I think, because they seem to offer caracatures of most relativist leaning views (e. g. egoism), and do not adequately criticize Kantian moral philosophy. But even so, the essay does explain many useful distinctions in philosophical ethical thought. Second, B and B offer both classic readings in Business Ethics (e. g. Milton Friedman), as well as really up to date readings, by many of the leaders in the field (e. g. Freeman, DeGeorge, etc). This is quite a good selection of readings, although they have omitted a few classic essays (like Galbraith's 'The Dependence Effect', and a few subjects which might have been useful, such as the question of whether one can attribute moral agency to corporations at all. Even so, B and B include more than any course in Business Ethics could cover. Third, B and B provide a Web site with excersizes and instructor aids. Depending on how much one uses the Web, this may be helpful too. So generally speaking, although no anthology is perfect, Beauchamp and Bowie have put together an admirable collection.

This book is a critical reader, and it's probably the most highly used text in business ethics today. Those who reviewed this book negatively sound like people looking for a fun, non-academic overview of the field. If so, this book isn't it. These are articles published in top academic journals, edited for readability, by scholars who are addressing the fundamental issues in a wide range of topics. It's meant to expose the span of the field and still give students (not light readers) exposure to contemporary literature that touches on the most salient points. It's meant to be a starting point to deeper research in any given topic. As such, the book is a complete success. B & B do a great job (here as in other ethics compendiums) of providing a framework that makes it easy for a professor to expose her students to the field in one swoop. They do a fine editorial job, stripping the articles of padding, and they work hard to keep the offerings up to date (passing on older articles that are superceded by fresh insights that touch on contemporary challenges and technologies; look for something relating to the corporate scandals of this last year in the next edition). If you are a student looking for an overview on business ethics, this book is the correct starting point. If you are someone looking for light reading about corporate corruption, with illustrations and full-color photos, stick to People magazine.

I really enjoyed this anthology, especially the section on sexual harassment. Some of the subjects were hard going, but, it was a good introduction to business ethics.