This article serves as an introduction to the collection of papers in this monographic issue on "What the European tradition can teach about Corporate Social Responsibility" and presents the project's rationale and main hypotheses. We maintain that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an...

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is not new. Over the course of time, many entrepreneurs have created and developed companies, with a strong sense of ethical and social responsibility. This paper presents an example of how CSR was conceived and put into practice when Caja de...

When Caja de Pensiones para la Vejez y de Ahorros, 'la Caixa', was created in 1905, it was not just a transient response to a serious social, political, and economic problem; it also provided a permanent solution by creating a long-lasting social welfare institution. In addition, its founder...

Frugality is a little studied virtue, but one that is important to the lives of individuals and families, communities and broader societies. In this article we consider what we mean by frugality and discuss its role in the decision-making process, within action theory. This leads us to a...

The traditional theories of the firm leave no room for love in business organizations, perhaps because it is thought that love is only an emotion or feeling, not a virtue, or because economic efficiency and profit making are considered to be incompatible with the practice of charity or love. In...

Facilitating payments are a very widespread form of corruption. They consist of small payments or gifts made to a person -a public official or an employee of a private company- to obtain a favor, such as expediting an administrative process, obtaining a permit, license or service, or avoiding an...

Conflicts of interest are a very widespread ethical problem which, precisely for that reason, deserves special attention, both from a legal viewpoint and from the point of view of ethics applied to organizations and professions. In this paper we use the conceptual framework of agency theory to...

The financial crisis which started in the United States in 2007 and which has spread throughout the world has many causes, one of which is the abundance of unethical behavior on the part of many of those who made the financial decisions, such as regulators, supervisors, managers and employees,...

This paper uses a real-life case taken from political history and recounted by Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic. Three times in this country's history, its leaders opted for a "more realistic" solution (giving way when faced with a serious problem: invasion or insurrection) in...

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have proven to be excellent instruments for promoting a wide range of causes. But they need to adhere to strict ethical principles, which usually are embodied in voluntary codes and standards. This paper analyzes one such standard, the "Ethics. NGO...