Ethicon
is the research centre in the field of ethics, integrity and sustainability
of the Department. In 2002, Ethicon assisted the board of the Erasmus University
in the development of a code of integrity for all employees and students. Ethicon
has also developed a dilemma game, which can be used by each Department and
group of students. The aim is to provide in depth normative studies of the ways
international business forms may handle these intricate problems and may develop
their ethical profile. These studies are based on: an analysis of extensive
sets of data concerning existing ethical codes of leading international business
firms and an analysis of the profound debates in business ethics and academic
philosophy in general on issues in meta-ethics (relativism, ethical objectivism),
normative theory (the role and impact of normative constraints, the balancing
of moral responsibilities) and applied ethics (ethical accounting, case studies).
The centre's job is to contribute to the understanding of ways in which international
firms may develop their distinctive identity as morally responsible agents,
taking the development and implementations of an ethics codes as the main
vehicle of doing so.
www.ethicon.nl and www.ib-sm.org/research