Purpose – In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , Max Weber chronicled how seventeenth‐century religious tenets expounded by John Calvin inadvertently laid the ideological groundwork for the flourishing of eighteenth‐century capitalism. In this early work on the rise of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to apply Chester Barnard's ideas about authority in organizations to the modern phenomenon of “whistle‐blowing” and highlight insights that can advance contemporary theory in business ethics. The paper coins a new term “the whistle‐blowing...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the current gap between the subjects of business ethics and pre‐1960 management theory. Design/methodology/approach – In an attempt to achieve the objective of the paper, the business ethics content of three leading management theorists...

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to better understand the origins of modern corporate social responsibility. The paper seeks to examine some factors that enabled the new industrial corporation to expand its role in society. Design/methodology/approach – Using institutional theory, this...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a meaningful framework for the classification of the integrity trait in the moral context (ethics), offering an understandable conceptualization of a notion that although identified as central in the literature has is not been defined in a...