Ebook: Research on Chinese Business Ethics, Volume 2 (Chinese, English abstracts)

Some selected concepts in this book:

EFFICIENCY : Efficiency is the ratio of human’s life cost tolife-value’s fulfillment. The efficiency that people need bona fide is their life value’s maximization rather than their wealth’s maximization. Any distribution, in essence, is the distribution of life value. The ultimate distribution principle aims to maximize our life value, distribute among the deservers the distributable parts of life value. In terms of value, no priority exists between efficiency and justice. Life-value’s maximization is the primary guiding principle in handling affairs involving efficiency and justice. With the guide of life-value maximization principle, efficiency should be based on justice and vice versa. When the contradiction between the two factors bulges to impair common citizens’life value, we should balance it out by offering a priority to the disadvantaged side.

EQUITY : Economists believe that the intergenerational equity is the important principle of maintaining and realizing the intergenerational harmony. Nature is the material basisof the human’s survival and production. The harmony between human beingand natureis the basis of intergenerationalfair. Human society wouldachieve thesustainable existenceby dealingwith intergenerational relationswith the principle of the intergenerational equity.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE Concerning the urban-rural relationship in our country, there are some new conflicts and problems. The economic system in urban areas differs fromrural ones. The environment of the city gets better however this has an adverse affect on ruralareas.

INTERGENERATIONAL EQUITY IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT : Economists believe that the intergenerational equity is the important principle of maintaining and realizing the intergenerational harmony. Nature is the material basisof the human’s survival and production. The harmony between human beingand natureis the basis of intergenerationalfair. Human society wouldachieve thesustainable existenceby dealingwith intergenerational relationswith the principle of the intergenerational equity.

ECOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION AND ECONOMIC ETHICS : Ecological civilization requires a corresponding economic form—ecological economy integrated with ecology. Additionally, the development of ecological economy needs its corresponding economic ethics. Economic ethics provides ethical impetus for economic agents, social consensus and ethical values for the government-led development of ecological economy. Ecologism comes into being and achieves popularity in the era of ecological civilization. The embodiment of its ecologism nature lies in the devotion of great efforts to developing ecological production, advocating fair distribution, equal exchange and ecological consumption with natural values taken into consideration.

MILL DILEMMA IN MODERN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS : Regarding the nature as a collection of natural things and physical events, the most of modern environmental ethics theory cannot get rid of the dilemma raised by Mill. Neither the dependence on the progress of technology nor the regression toward primitive life is in line with the original intention of environmental ethics. However, theenvironmental virtue ethics has understood the nature as the emergenceof meaning. Thus, the natural world is not only available resources,butthe carrier of meaning. This is an effective way to break through the modern environmental ethical dilemma. The more important is that it essentially has a Confucian resonance.

HONESTY ARGUMENTATION : Good faith is a predictable commitment and interpersonal and social trust based on this commitment. Honesty, avirtue of personality, as well asa proper and effective social creditsystem are two basic premiseswhich ensure the reasonability and faithful practice of commitment. Facing such complex realitiesas the supernormal social political and law conditions, the public tendency of social structure and the relative lack of cultural moral resources supply during modern social transformation, we urgently need to construct a credit system with system, ethics and morality as three dimension pillar. Only by this way can we find a reasonable social ethics basis for dissolving current social credit crisis.

MARKET DIMENSION OF CREDIT：As the efficient capital of market economy, credit can improve market efficiency, safeguard market order, and promote market development. In the dimension of market efficiency, credit plays three important roles：reducing trade costs, saving circulation expenses and fastening capital circulation chain. Moreover, trade costs is saved through the means of reducing searching expenses before trade, avoiding marginal costs of excessive choice, lowering contract hazard and reducing both supervision costs and contract dispute expenses. Credit, as the basic factor forming the pattern of duplicated game behavior, can clear up inverse choice and evade moral hazards. Advanced charges and quick settlement pattern of credit can expand market scale and accelerate market trade speed in the field of market development. Credit management can advance market development. Law credit and ethic credit are taken as not only indexes to measure a country’s market development degree, but also criterions of development level to check and distinguish between well-developed market economy countries.

THE MORAL SOUL OF MARKET ECONOMY HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT：It is a general consensus that honesty is the moral soul to maintain s healthy functioning of market economy. The reasons are that honesty is the need of market players to improve their material benefit and spiritual interests; it is an important means to reduce the trading cost; it is the result of free competition laws. The common reasons whydishonest behaviors widely exist are: there are loopholes in the system used to constrict the economic man’s opportunism tendency; the money oriented mechanism of Capitalism leads people to give up integrity; the rule of capitalist commodity productionresults in lacking integrity. The special reasonsof problems on the integrity of our country is: China’s market mechanism is not perfect; the government regulation of the market is not effective; the tendency of chasing material benefits is very serious in the whole society; information asymmetry is also very serious. In order to solve the bottleneck problem whichrestricts the healthy development of market economy, we should take the following measures: optimizing the social environment of honesty in rule of law, speeding up the construction of material safeguard system; constructing modern credit government, exertingthe supervision of the media and transforming the traditional honesty culture.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ：The academics usually argue thatenterprises have value reasons to perform corporate social responsibility, from the point view of economics and law, which lacks dependent ethical value analysis. This paper analysesthe theoretical supportof ethics on corporate social responsibilityfrom four aspects: the spirits of human nature, the human purpose of economic activity, thehuman belongingnessof economic activityand the correspondence of will freedomwithresponsibility.

MORAL RESPONSIBILITIESOF ENTERPRISES:Taking a stand different from the theory of benefit-relativity and that of contract, we think that we should analyze the basis for enterprises to undertake moral responsibilities from a more comprehensive perspective, holding that the basis lies in the relations between benefit correlates of enterprises, in the social contracts concerned, and in the consequences of enterprises’ conduct. The moral responsibilities of enterprises can be understood both in a broad sense and in a narrow sense. In a broad sense, the moral responsibilities of enterprises are incarnated in their economic, legal and cultural responsibilities as well as in the various kinds of responsibilities concerning the ethical construction of enterprises. The moral responsibilities of enterprises in a narrow sense refer to the responsibilities that an enterprise undertakes for itself, organizations of the same trade and the society. In the second sense, the nature of the moral responsibilities of enterprises may be summarized as “seeking constant improvement” and “seeking peaceful harmony”. When moral responsibilitiesare implanted in enterprises, there forms the conscience of enterprises, which refers to the self-consciousness and self-evaluation of enterprises about their own responsibilities. The conscience of enterprises finds its expressions in the senses of love, honesty and justice among enterprises.

ECONOMIC ETHICS : In essence, economics and ethics have inherent unity. From this standpoint, China´s Socialist Republic is an “economic-ethical”responsibility, in which the economic responsibility and ethical responsibility are combined as an inherent unity and also interacted with each other.

HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA : Corporate Social Responsibilityis one of the core elements of enterprise competitivenessand it reflects the moral level of corporations. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Corporate Social Responsibilityof Chinese enterprisesexperienced three progressive eras. In the era of planned economy, Corporate Social Responsibilityis the same as political obligation. From the beginning of reform and opening to the end of twentieth Century, theconsciousnessof modern Corporate Social Responsibilitywas awaked. In the new era, Corporate Social Responsibilityis performed more consciously.