On Morals, Markets and Money - Business and Economic Ethics Revisited

Time: 19-22 August 2010
Venue: Arnoldshain-Schmitten, Germany

The Conference is the annual conference of the Societas Ethica, European Research Society for Ethics. The focus of this year’s conference is on economic and business ethics from various philosophical and theological perspectives.

The crisis of the financial markets has led to a crisis in the economic systems internationally. The concepts of more market liberalization and markets as places of self-organization have gone into turmoil. There are different levels at which the economic developments can be discussed ethically on the political level both greater transparency and more regulation in the economic sphere are discussed in relation to different economic policies. Where is globalization heading, and what about aspects of justice concerning North-South relations globally as well as gender issues? Is there a global need for a European-inspired “Social Market Economy”? What are the ethical foundations for this? What other concepts are there and how can they be seen from an ethical point of view? The ethical analysis of action on financial markets is an ongoing need as well.

On the level of the corporation, discussions about “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) have to be sharpened anew: what concepts of responsibility are talking about? What are the roles of companies? How can companies be moral agents? What can be considered as ethical and as unethical behavior? What are the roles of codes of conduct, charts of ethics and guidelines?
On the other hand, the focus lies also on the individual manager and banker and his or her morals in the sense of virtue ethics. Do they need an ethics for consumers?

In this conference the focus will be on the ethical implications of the present situation in the economy, and they will discuss how ethics and morals relate to economics and finance. What is the role of ethics in economics? The aim of the conference is to do this in a broad spectrum, taking into account the historical and sociological analysis of economic ethics as well as philosophical and theological ethical analysis of economics and business, economical perspectives on ethics, business ethics, economic ethics and the ethics of financial markets.

• Organized by: Societas Ethica (European Society for the Research of Ethics) and Evangelische Akademie Arnoldshain
  
• Deadline for abstracts/proposals: 1 March 2010
• The languages of the conference: German, English and French

For more info http://www.societasethica.info/