Business Ethics: Normative, Positive, and Practical

Abstract

The chapter clarifies the methodological structure of business ethics and investigates the methodological consistency of business ethics (BE) research in academic publications for the last 30 years. First, we re-examine the structure of business ethics as a separate discipline and suggest a tripartite structure (normative, positive, and practical) instead of more traditional division on two parts (normative and descriptive). Then we analyze publications in the leading business ethics journals for last 30 years and reveal some trends in the changing structure of business ethics research.