business-ethics-and-governance

# Business Ethics and Governance Business ethics asks what a firm ought to do when legal permission and moral responsibility diverge. Corporate governance asks how firms are structured so that the people making decisions are accountable to the people bearing the consequences. This skill treats both together, because governance without ethics produces compliant wrongdoing, and ethics without governance produces individual virtue in a structurally unaccountable firm. **Agent affinity:** drucker (management ethics and purpose of the firm), follett (stakeholder integration), mintzberg (governance in practice) **Concept IDs:** bus-stakeholder-theory, bus-corporate-governance, bus-business-ethics, bus-corporate-social-responsibility ## The Ethics and Governance Toolbox at a Glance | # | Technique | Best for | Key signal | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | The law-ethics gap | Recognizing a real dilemma | Something legal feels wrong | | 2 | Four ethical frameworks | Analyzing a decision | Gut-feel is unreliable | | 3 | Stakeholder vs shareholder | Deciding whose interests count | Policy choice affects multiple groups | | 4 | Board structure and fiduciary duty | Designing governance | Founders are also the board | | 5 | Conflicts of interest | Preventing decision capture | Decision-maker has a personal stake | | 6 | Whistleblowing | Handling internal dissent | Something wrong is being hidden | | 7 | CSR and ESG | Structuring responsibility | Stakeholders want commitments | | 8 | Complianc...