The Routledge Companion to Business Ethics

p.411

Part VI

Roles and responsibilities within the firm

Introduction

As organizational structures, firms are systems of integrated components in which individuals bear specified roles and corresponding responsibilities. Viewed from the “inside,” organizational positions—“offices”—are filled by people who must perform the tasks and responsibilities assigned to them by virtue of their positions as managers, employees, or directors. Viewed from the “outside,” the firm itself may have duties and responsibilities toward employees, shareholders, consumers or society. The chapters in this section not only discuss how or by whom firms are, or ought to be, guided or controlled, but take up in addition the theory and practice of management ethics, the ...