Business Ethics and Corporate Governance in Europe

For some years now, the question of how to implement and operationalize moral values, convictions, and intentions in firms has received increasing attention in the business and corporate ethics literature. The main issue is to develop management systems capable of integrating the moral dimension of economic transactions and questions of value into firms’ strategies, policies, and procedures. The challenge for such management systems is to achieve this in a sustained way, and to carry the moral dimensions and questions of values down to the level of typical decisions taken in everyday business. In Germany, this discussion has unfolded under the label “values management,” emphasizing the link between value creation and moral values. It parallels the manifold endeavors on the European level to secure the credibility and verifiability of value management systems, as well as their documentation and reporting structures, by imposing standards or guidelines and assurance processes to evaluate those.1 In Germany, the main standard is the “ValuesManagementSystemZfW” developed by the Zentrum für Wirtschaftsethik (Center for Business Ethics).2 It has been developed on the basis of a decade of practical experience and cooperation with leading German firms, ranging from SMEs to multinationals. The German standard aims at sustainable management by integrating its economic, moral, legal, and political dimensions.