Here are 100 books that Business Ethics in the 21st Century fans have personally recommended if you like Business Ethics in the 21st Century. Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Contemporary Reflections on Business Ethics

Kleio Akrivou Author Of The Challenges of Capitalism for Virtue Ethics and the Common Good: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

From my list on capitalism, ethics, and the self.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have cross-disciplinary expertise (ethics and moral philosophy, philosophical anthropology and moral psychology), and my work focuses on personalist virtue ethics, moral human development, and the links between ethics and economics; I am a person who loves nature and animals, and I’m thrilled to do good work. I was educated and worked internationally, with academic degrees in different Europe countries and the USA, and 30 years of work and academic experience in Europe, the USA, and SE Asia. I live with my family near London, U.K.. I am passionate about enabling a more sustainable society that however remains rooted in human dignity and avoids instrumentalizing the person

Kleio's book list on capitalism, ethics, and the self

Kleio Akrivou Why Kleio loves this book

An admirably internally coherent book with a rigorous and philosophically informed proposal to restore ethical business premised on altruism as an underlying force of agency. 

It also supports the idea that more classical (i.e Aristotle’s virtue ethics) rather than the modern ethics (utility, duty, social contract, etc.) foundations are stronger.

By Ronald Duska , Norman E. Bowie (editor) , Patricia H. Werhane (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Contemporary Reflections on Business Ethics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Over 30 years Ronald F. Duska has established himself as one of the leading scholars in business ethics. This book presents Duska's articles the years on ethics, business ethics, teaching ethics, agency theory, postmodernism, employee rights, and ethics in accounting and the financial services industry. These reflect his underlying philosophical concerns and their application to real-world challenges - a method that might be called an Aristotelian common-sense approach to ethical decision making.


If you love Business Ethics in the 21st Century...

Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

Book cover of Local Insights, Global Ethics for Business

Kleio Akrivou Author Of The Challenges of Capitalism for Virtue Ethics and the Common Good: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

From my list on capitalism, ethics, and the self.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have cross-disciplinary expertise (ethics and moral philosophy, philosophical anthropology and moral psychology), and my work focuses on personalist virtue ethics, moral human development, and the links between ethics and economics; I am a person who loves nature and animals, and I’m thrilled to do good work. I was educated and worked internationally, with academic degrees in different Europe countries and the USA, and 30 years of work and academic experience in Europe, the USA, and SE Asia. I live with my family near London, U.K.. I am passionate about enabling a more sustainable society that however remains rooted in human dignity and avoids instrumentalizing the person

Kleio's book list on capitalism, ethics, and the self

Kleio Akrivou Why Kleio loves this book

I love the clarity and the bold historically informed orientation, and that the proposal on how to act for the common good takes ideas from different virtue ethics around the world (from Aristotle’s European to Asian ones in Confucius, Watzusian ethics in Japan, etc.).

They are so different from how current politics act with only power in mind. This book is sensitive to local insights and has strong realist basis for global ethics for business. 

By Daryl Koehn ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Local Insights, Global Ethics for Business as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book evaluates strategies for managing ethical conflict. Macro-approaches that attribute select values to entire peoples and claim supremacy for these values are suspect. A micro-approach, focusing on the ethics of individual thinkers, is better. The study uses the ethics of Confucius and Tetsuro Watsuji to derive a process-based universal ethic that respects local differences yet is not relativistic.


Book cover of Ethics and Capitalism

Kleio Akrivou Author Of The Challenges of Capitalism for Virtue Ethics and the Common Good: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

From my list on capitalism, ethics, and the self.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have cross-disciplinary expertise (ethics and moral philosophy, philosophical anthropology and moral psychology), and my work focuses on personalist virtue ethics, moral human development, and the links between ethics and economics; I am a person who loves nature and animals, and I’m thrilled to do good work. I was educated and worked internationally, with academic degrees in different Europe countries and the USA, and 30 years of work and academic experience in Europe, the USA, and SE Asia. I live with my family near London, U.K.. I am passionate about enabling a more sustainable society that however remains rooted in human dignity and avoids instrumentalizing the person

Kleio's book list on capitalism, ethics, and the self

Kleio Akrivou Why Kleio loves this book

I like that the economic advantages of capitalism have not been underestimated, but also that its social, economic failures (corruption, exclusion/poverty, harmfulness and hubristic behaviours, impersonalism, and environmental degradation).

A solution offered is balancing justice and productivity, is trying to fix capitalism without alienating its elites. 

By John Douglas Bishop (editor) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ethics and Capitalism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Despite the great economic advantage of capitalism - that it is an efficient system of production and distribution - capitalist societies struggle with its by-products of poverty, exclusion, corruption, and environmental destruction. The essays in "Ethics and Capitalism" address the question of ensuring ethical and just societies within a capitalist system without sacrificing productivity. The introductory essay is a guide to the issues in the emerging field of ethics and capitalism, and refers to recent contributions from several disciplines. The collection as a whole evaluates the morality of capitalism by looking at its foundation in property theory, its relationship to…


If you love Norman Bowie...

Book cover of The Tao of Poison

The Tao of Poison by Isham Cook,

A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.

The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…

Book cover of Capitalism: A Short History

Kleio Akrivou Author Of The Challenges of Capitalism for Virtue Ethics and the Common Good: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

From my list on capitalism, ethics, and the self.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have cross-disciplinary expertise (ethics and moral philosophy, philosophical anthropology and moral psychology), and my work focuses on personalist virtue ethics, moral human development, and the links between ethics and economics; I am a person who loves nature and animals, and I’m thrilled to do good work. I was educated and worked internationally, with academic degrees in different Europe countries and the USA, and 30 years of work and academic experience in Europe, the USA, and SE Asia. I live with my family near London, U.K.. I am passionate about enabling a more sustainable society that however remains rooted in human dignity and avoids instrumentalizing the person

Kleio's book list on capitalism, ethics, and the self

Kleio Akrivou Why Kleio loves this book

A brilliant short history of capitalism, and how it all evolved until we got to today’s late or hyper-capitalism.

I love the way the book draws from social and economic history, to show how economic, social, and personal relations and ways of life have been weakened is something that starts from the 14th century but also evolved locally as much as in more universal ways.

By Jurgen Kocka ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Capitalism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this authoritative and accessible book, one of the world's most renowned historians provides a concise and comprehensive history of capitalism within a global perspective from its medieval origins to the 2008 financial crisis and beyond. From early commercial capitalism in the Arab world, China, and Europe, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrialization, to today's globalized financial capitalism, Jurgen Kocka offers an unmatched account of capitalism, one that weighs its great achievements against its great costs, crises, and failures. Based on intensive research, the book puts the rise of capitalist economies in social, political, and cultural context, and shows how their…


Book cover of Conscious Capitalism

Neil Gaught Author Of CORE

From my list on purpose and the future of business.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve read countless books and articles on business, leadership, and sustainability—but the ones I return to are those that grapple with purpose. I’m drawn to anything that challenges the "business as usual" status quo and shows how business can be a force for good. Having worked across sectors and shaped my own thinking around the challenges facing business and society, I know how powerful purpose can be when done right. But more than that, I feel it—these books fuel my belief that meaningful change is possible. If you care about business’s potential to positively shape society and the planet, give them a go.

Neil's book list on purpose and the future of business

Neil Gaught Why Neil loves this book

I’ve read lots of books about the future of business and the future of capitalism, but this book deeply inspired me. Mackey and Sisodia articulate with clarity and conviction what I’ve long believed—that purpose and profit are not mutually exclusive but, in fact, must go hand in hand.

I particularly connected with their emphasis on conscious leadership and the need for a higher purpose to guide business strategy. It reinforced my own thinking and sharpened my understanding of how critical it is for leaders to align values with actions. I saw clear parallels with the approach I have developed, and it affirmed for me that embedding purpose isn’t just desirable—it’s essential.

By Rajendra Sisodia , John Mackey ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Conscious Capitalism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As seen on Oprah's Super Soul Sunday A New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestseller In this book, Whole Foods Market cofounder John Mackey and professor and Conscious Capitalism, Inc. cofounder Raj Sisodia argue for the inherent good of both business and capitalism. Featuring some of today's best-known companies, they illustrate how these two forces can--and do--work most powerfully to create value for all stakeholders: including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society, and the environment. These "Conscious Capitalism" companies include Whole Foods Market, Southwest Airlines, Costco, Google, Patagonia, The Container Store, UPS, and dozens of others. We know them; we…


Book cover of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Wendy Syfret Author Of The Sunny Nihilist

From my list on help you reject capitalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a happy, very well-adjusted adult who deeply believes that life is pointless. This understanding that I do not matter–and neither does anything else I love–hasn’t driven me to despair but rather liberated me. My nihilism is a tool to free me from corrosive messages of meaning, performance, consumption, and exploitation. It allows me to understand and love my life as a delicate, fleeting, lovely, and one-day forgotten thing. And with that perspective, I understand how precious it is. 

Wendy's book list on help you reject capitalism

Wendy Syfret Why Wendy loves this book

People love saying books changed their lives, but I can confidently say this book altered my perception of reality. I was already a fan of Jia’s journalism, but this book illuminated my life in a way I never expected. 

As a writer, I often think the best work hits you in that strange place before a feeling becomes a thought. It puts words to a sense you are carrying around but haven’t articulated yet. This book did that to me more than anything I’ve ever read. It didn’t ease my anxieties, but it explained why I felt the way I did and made me feel less alone (and a bit smarter).

It finally explained to me what everyone was talking about when they blatantly blamed “capitalism” for all their problems. 

By Jia Tolentino ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Trick Mirror as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Times book of the year A Guardian book of the year 'Magnificent'The Times 'Dazzling' New Statesman 'It filled me with hope' Zadie Smith

What happens to our behaviour when we live most of our lives online? What does it mean to 'always be optimising'? And what is it about scams and the millennial generation?

Offering nuanced and witty reflections on feminism, reality TV, the internet, drugs, identity and more, Trick Mirror is a multifaceted, thought-provoking and entertaining response to our zeitgeist - a must-read for anyone interested in the way we live and think today.


If you love Business Ethics in the 21st Century...

Book cover of Draakensky: A Supernatural Tale of Magick and Romance

Draakensky by Paula Cappa,

A wind sorcerer. A dark spirit. An unsolved murder.

On the haunted Draakensky Windmill Estate, sketch artist Charlotte Knight arrives to live on the property, hired to illustrate the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke—a bright and lucrative opportunity to boost her struggling art career. 

She meets the reclusive spinster Jaa…

Book cover of Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic

Lori D. Ginzberg Author Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life

From my list on that will blow your mind about US women’s history.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I started college in 1974 as a young radical feminist I had zero interest in history—it was all wars and men. But in a course about the Russian Revolution I learned the most thrilling thing: historians don’t simply relay facts, they argue with one another. I fell in love, and I never looked back. I am especially fascinated by what societies label “unthinkable,” and how that shapes, contains, and controls radical ideas. I've always been intrigued by what is "out of the question" and then poke at it, see what lies underneath, and try to figure out why things remain, or are kept, invisible.

Lori's book list on that will blow your mind about US women’s history

Lori D. Ginzberg Why Lori loves this book

On one level, this is a book about housework in the pre-Civil War northern United States. Much more profoundly, it shatters ideas about unpaid labor in early industrial capitalism. It completely changed myand many readers’ideas of what constitutes “work,” what it means to contribute to a household economy, and how ideas about wages (and, especially, work done by men outside the home) obscured early capitalists’ dependence on women’s unwaged work. After reading this, you’ll never refer to “women who worked” and “women who didn’t” again. It should be essential reading not only for women’s historians, but for anyone interested in ideologies of labor, capitalism, and the history of work.

[Full disclosure: I met Jeanne Boydston on my second day of graduate school and we collaborated closely on our dissertations (later books). She was my best friend and best teacher until her much-too-early death in 2008.]

By Jeanne Boydston ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Home and Work as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Over the course of a two hundred year period, women's domestic labor gradually lost its footing as a recognized aspect of economic life in America. The image of the colonial "goodwife," valued for her contribution to household prosperity, had been replaced by the image of a "dependent" and a "non-producer." This book is a history of housework in the United States prior to the Civil War. More particularly, it is a history of women's unpaid domestic labor in the context of the emergence of an industrialized society in the northern United States. Boydston argues that just as a capitalist economic…


Book cover of The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto

Liah Greenfeld Author Of The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth

From my list on the relationship between capitalism and nationalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth is the second volume of my nationalism trilogy. When I published the first volume, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, the accepted view on the subject of nationalism was that it is a product of economic development, specifically, of industrialization and capitalism. On the basis of historical evidence, I proved that its emergence had nothing to do with these economic phenomena: in fact, it preceded both. Reviews of Nationalism, noting that, for this reason, economic developments could not have caused nationalism, raised the question what relationship, then, did exist between nationalism and the economy, and this led me to investigate it. 

Liah's book list on the relationship between capitalism and nationalism

Liah Greenfeld Why Liah loves this book

This book, originally published in 1960, is the classical statement of the still dominant position in economic history, which assumes that economic growth is natural and which I have proven wrong.

I recommend it to anyone interested in the current (unchanging for decades) state of the discipline as an essential model of what I was arguing against.

By W W Rostow ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Stages of Economic Growth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

2017 Reprint of 1960 First Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. In the text Professor Rostow gives an account of economic growth based on a dynamic theory of production and interpreted in terms of actual societies. Five basic stages of economic growth are distinguished with detailed discussions of each stage including illustrative examples. Rostow also applies the concept of stages of growth to an examination of the problems of military aggression and the nuclear arms race. The final chapter includes a comparison of his non-communist manifesto with Marxist theory. Remains a classic text…


Book cover of Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America

Timothy Alborn Author Of Misers: British Responses to Extreme Saving, 1700-1860

From my list on the strangeness of money.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by money since I was a graduate student when I had even less of it than I do today (as a British historian in the CUNY system). We all carry it in our wallets and have more or less of it in the bank, but it’s also in the air we breathe, suffusing the books we read and the decisions we make. So when I started researching and writing about the British past, money and its associated institutions seemed like an obvious place to start looking. It has yet to let me down, enabling me to discover new things to say about politics, literature, and society.

Timothy's book list on the strangeness of money

Timothy Alborn Why Timothy loves this book

Although this book is ostensibly about risk, none of Levy’s fascinating case studies stray far from money. Indeed, one of his central claims is that modern capitalism transforms risk into a financial calculation, whereby money’s fluid nature can be employed to divert uncertainty in different directions. Although the goal in such transactions is always to contain risk, the reality (as brilliantly recounted by Levy) is far less certain.

I read this book immediately after writing about the history of British life insurance, and most of these cases (about insuring slave ships, African-American savings, farm mortgages, and the stock market, among others) reinforced the lessons I had learned about the Quixotic and hubristic nature of risk management. The upshot of the book is that, over the course of America’s long nineteenth century, the rich got richer, and the poor got empty promises. Its brilliance lies in the relish with which Levy…

By Jonathan Levy ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Freaks of Fortune as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Until the early nineteenth century, "risk" was a specialized term: it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract. Freaks of Fortune tells the story of how the modern concept of risk emerged in the United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future.

Focusing on the hopes and anxieties of ordinary people, Jonathan Levy shows how risk developed through the extraordinary growth of new financial institutions-insurance corporations, savings banks, mortgage-backed securities markets, commodities futures markets, and securities markets-while posing inescapable moral questions. For at…


If you love Norman Bowie...

Book cover of New Rock New Rules

New Rock New Rules by Richard Sparks,

The epic saga continues. Jarnland is in a frenzy of excitement. After the eccentric demise of Old King Wyllard, his co-Majesty, young Queen Esmeralda, announces a Royal Tournament to celebrate the return of our heroes from their perilous quest. The Main Event will be a duel between the legendary warrior…

Book cover of Telling the Map

Michael J. DeLuca Author Of Night Roll

From my list on community-building amid the ruins of capitalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've been in love with ecological writing, the effort to communicate love for and grief over the destruction of the profound beauty of the natural world, since I wrote my first play about rainforest clear-cutting in fifth grade—if not before. In 2016, I started Reckoning, a nonprofit journal of creative writing about environmental justice, because I wanted to encourage others doing this work, to provide an independent platform for it in ways profit-driven traditional publishing wasn't, and to build a community where those writers could share and inspire each other. Seven years later, that community defines me; it's the most rewarding thing I've ever done.

Michael's book list on community-building amid the ruins of capitalism

Michael J. DeLuca Why Michael loves this book

Christopher Rowe's prose is beautiful, vivid, and engrossing. His vision of a future mid-South dominated by rogue artificial intelligence conceals amid its wild phantasmagoria a surprisingly perceptive tenderness for the ways people cling together as they struggle to adapt and make space for each other in a complex and massively changed world. These stories also communicate an engrossing, evangelical love for bikes and cycling like nothing else I've read.

By Christopher Rowe ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Telling the Map as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

There are ten stories here including one readers have waited ten long years for: in new novel-la The Border State Rowe revisits the world of his much-lauded story The Voluntary State. Competitive cyclists twins Michael and Maggie have trained all their lives to race internationally. One thing holds them back: their mother who years before crossed the border into Tennessee.

Praise for Christopher Rowe:

"Rowe's stories are the kind of thing you want on a cold, winter's night when the fire starts burning low. Terrific."
Justina Robson (Glorious Angels)

"As good as he is now, he'll keep getting better. Read…


Book cover of Contemporary Reflections on Business Ethics
Book cover of Local Insights, Global Ethics for Business
Book cover of Ethics and Capitalism

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