The Corporate Ethics Audit As a New Tool for Management by Values: Case: Betapharm Arzneimittel Gmbh, Augsburg

Values and beliefs in businesses are hard to grasp. Nevertheless, they play an important role in managing any organisation. This book introduces the concept of an ethics audit as one approach to make people aware of the existence of ethics issues in business and as an attempt make ethics rateable and comparable. The ethics audit is a powerful tool to determine to what extent the formal ethics rules of a company are put into practice in the daily work routine. It helps to bring the organisational values into focus and to create appropriate value statements, and it can even contribute to enhanced employee motivation. A theoretical discussion of the concept of an ethics audit is followed by a case in which a specific ethics audit is developed for the medium-sized German pharmaceutical company betapharm Arzneimittel GmbH. The book addresses both students and academics in the field of management or business ethics, as well as practitioners in businesses and organisations.