Customer Reviews

Business Ethics 2009 Update: Ethical Decision Making and Cases

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I can't believe that this book is the standard in most college ethics and business courses. I had to take two ethics classes, which were two of my first courses for this term. I was really excited to start school but this book soon quelled that excitement. Luckily, I also had a business law course to take at the same time so I could work on it when I had to get away from the ethics course for fear of losing my mind.

This book, if you can call it that, it just very poorly written. I don't mean that the mechanics or the grammar was poorly written, it had little organization of ideas and it was very redundant. It was also not written well, there was no form of organization of the material and it suffered from redundancy. See?

Also, this text was very hard to take notes from and I felt most of the material was just padding to fill out the book. Most of the ideas and topics covered were mostly common sense even though the book says that ethics isn't commonsensical. C'mon I mean really? People know it is wrong to steal, use company property for personal use, manipulate markets for personal gain, etc. The book makes it seem that in the business world people are removed from the usual expectations of conduct that society places on individuals and organizations.

I had to write two papers for the one ethics course. One was actually creating my own code of ethics and a standards and procedures policy for a fictitious company. This book was of little help in that area. Everything about code of ethics and what not is scattered throughout the book and in several chapters the book skews off in a tangent that is barely related to the topic. I ended up just b.s.ing my way through the paper and passed with almost a perfect score.

Also many of the examples of ethics violations or ethical dilemmas are never completed, they give an example, leave out the decision of the person in the example and then go back to it a chapter later but still never give any insight into whether the person made a decision and what the decision was.

All in all, this just a very hard book to read, I think the authors are very full of themselves, just as most philosophy experts are. And that is what this book is, a bunch of b.s. philosophy. I rented this book from a rental company online, I am contemplating purchasing the book just so that I can destroy it and there will be one less copy on earth. If you have to use this book for college, woe is you.

I agree with the previous posts. It is current and uses good examples. I guess what I don't like is the composition of the book. I am not sure if I can even complain about that without sounding stupid and like I am nagging. It's just really lengthy with little breaks throughout the chapters. Sitting down to read one chapter is really tedious. I don't like it. I think it could have been written in a form that is easier to follow. I have taken many college courses, as I am a senior, and so far, this is the worst. I am not sure if it is because of the subject itself or the book. It just seems that other tedious courses I have taken, I appreciated more because the book was easy to follow without being unnecessarily lengthy and dragging on like this one does. I never look forward to sitting down to open this book up and read two chapters a week. Reading this is almost torturous for me.

If you're buying this book it's because of the same reason I did - you have to for school. So whether or not it's any good is really a moot point. That said this book sucks. No need for fanciful terms, or witty prose when "sucks" gets the job done. This book is poorly written, verbose, factually unhelpful, and a cut-and-paste style mash of newspaper clippings held together by winding pseudo-essays from presumably the authors that go nowhere and offer even less insight. This book has the feel of a text that was created solely for creation's sake - without a clear purpose, or readily apparent layout or theme, and published more out of an attempt to fill a niche in the college text market than actually inform the reader.

If you're going to have to write either a company ethics plan, or research paper on something similar, get started now with either your school's library or maybe Google Scholar to guide you. Don't think that this book is going to be the "missing link" between an A (or just passing: depending on your own goals) and failure when it arrives in the mail. So, save yourself some money and buy the cheapest version you can get from a reputable supplier; this is not a book you are going to be keeping for your collection.

The cases in the back of the book are current events and are very interesting. The text chapters could be improved but I did pick up some knowledge that is useful.

This textbook was very expensive for how much I actually use it. The material in the book is very revelent but the second paragraph states that they are not going to tell you what is right and what is wrong. What is the purpose of this book if they are not going to tell you anything or at least give some guidelines? The stories about our country's big leaders are very interesting and sometimes are differnt than what you think. In all reality I had to have this book for business ethics class, I didn't have a choice. Still the only con to it is the price.

This book is really current. It even has an introduction that was added just prior to printing. It also explains the financial meltdown in a special appendix. I especially liked the real-world case studies (18 total) that cover everything from the Countrywide sub-prime loan fiasco to Enron, Bernie Madoff, etc. It's a very good selection for those who are interested in the ethics violations and financial crisis over the past year.

The book is in excellant shape and we received the shipment within a week of our order, just in time for classes to start. We will use them again.