Business, Integrity, and Peace: Beyond Geopolitical and Disciplinary Boundaries

Description

Ethical business behavior has an unexpected payoff: it reduces the likelihood of violence. This insight forms the basis of Business, Integrity, and Peace, first published in 2007. Academic and popular interest in the topics of corporate responsibility and 'peace through commerce' has surged. This book demonstrates that the adoption of generally accepted ethical business practices does not require wholesale changes in corporate governance. It does require, however, the development of more reflexive and self-regulating models of corporate decision-making, drawing upon three strands of existing corporate responsibility approaches: the legal, the managerial, and the aesthetic. Fort introduces the concept of Total Integrity Management, providing an integrative framework that transcends disciplinary boundaries to create ethical corporate cultures, which in turn offer the best opportunity for corporations to become instruments of peace. Business, Integrity, and Peace is an important and provocative work that will appeal to academic scholars, business leaders and policy-makers alike.

Timothy L. Fort is the Lindner-Gambal Professor of Business Ethics at George Washington University Business School and an academic advisor for the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics. He is Director of the Program on Peace Through Commerce at George Washington University's Business School and is also an adjunct faculty member of the George Washington University School of Law.

'It is easy to be cynical about the proposition that business organizations can be agents for promoting peace in the complex and contentious world of the early twenty-first century. Building upon his earlier highly regarded work, Timothy L. Fort in Business, Integrity, and Peace argues compellingly that Peace Through Commerce is an essential aspect of achieving a more peaceful global society. Fort offers an approach termed 'Total Integrity Management' based upon three types of trust which, he contends, will assist business firms endeavoring to serve as instrumentalities of peace. This book provides crisp and original thinking about a difficult subject. It should be read by business and governmental leaders and opinion makers.' Edwin M. Epstein, Professor of the Graduate School, International and Area Studies, University of California, Berkeley 'Professor Fort is a leader in the Peace Through Commerce movement. In this book, he raises the movement to a new level of maturity through a management framework called Total Integrity Management. Blending theory and practice, the book is filled with fascinating examples illustrating the positive role that companies can play in contributing to world peace.' George J. Siedel, Williamson Family Professor of Business Administration, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan 'Fort is insightful, effective, and interesting in tracing the relationship between the role of business in society and potential contributions to peace. In a creative approach, he covers a remarkable array of concepts and evidence such as the tendency toward violence in the evolution of mankind, the anthropology of groups, the nature of law, spiritual/aesthetic approaches to business ethics, corporate culture. Upon this foundation, Fort forges three kinds of trust - Hard, Real, Good - as the connectors. Tim is a pioneer in the field of peace through commerce and it shows.' Lee Tavis, C. R. Smith Professor of Business Administration and Director of the Program on Multinational Managers and Developing Country Concerns, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame