Business Ethics: A Literature Review with a Focus on Marketing Ethics John Tsalikis David]. Fritzsche ABSTRACT. In recent years, the business ethics literature has exploded in both volume and importance.Becauseof the sheer volume and diversity of this literature, a review article was deemed necessary to provide focus and clarity to the area. The present paper reviews the literature on business ethics with a special focus in marketing ethics. The literature is divided into normative and empirical sections, with more emphasis given to the latter. Even though the majority of the articles deal with the American reality, most of the knowl- edge gained is easily transferable to other nations. The ethical sensitivity of all professionals - lawyers, physicians, educators, and business executives - has come under close scrutiny in recent years. Post- Watergate morality has dictated that the past level of ethics exhibited by professionals is no longer adequate and perhaps never was. This renewed ethical concern represents the recurrence of an established issue: the lack of ethical behavior exhi- bited by many persons in positions of responsibility. New articles appear almost daily in newspapers stating that another company has come under inves- tigation by the Justice Department for illegal activ- ities such as illegal campaign contributions, bribes to foreign countries, insider trading, etc. In response to John Tsalikis is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Florida International University. His articles have appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Ethics,Journal of International Consumer Mar- keting, and Psychology and Marketing. David_[. Fritzsche is a Professorof Business Administration at the University of Portland. His articles have appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Columbia Journal of World Business,Journal of Macromarketing,Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Ethics: Guidelines for Managers, and Researchin Corporate SocialPerformance and Policy. these pronouncements, policy statements on business ethics have poured forth from corporations, recog- nizing the apparent fact that some of this country's most distinguished executives do not care how results are obtained, even if it means breaking the law. In addition, Frederick (1986) argues that the social environment is bound to become more turbulent and disorderly. Scott and Mitchell (1985) underscore that claim with their concern over widespread cor- ruption. Scott and Mitchell refer to the plethora of articles reporting such managerial excesses as exhor- bitant bonuses, golden parachutes, "greenmail", ego- motivated takeover wars, and even fraud. The most scathing indictment on the state of corporate ethics was voiced by Amitai Etzioni who concluded that in the past decade, two-thirds of the 500 largest U.S. corporations have been involved in varying degrees in some form of illegal behavior (Gellerman, 1986). However, the majority of situations that business people face today do not involve strictly legal mat- ters. Instead they must make judgments concerning what is "right" or ethical to do. It is one of the tasks of ethics to distinguish between ethical and unethical business practices. The task of determining what is ethical or not is not easy. Kenneth Andrews once said, "if it's black and white, and a man has nor- mal courage and security, he'll say no. It's in the gray areas that the businessman may more likely flounder." Johnson (1981) argues that "most business deci- sions involve choices between two or more goods or two undesirable options." A related challenge to ethical decision making is that sometimes good and evil seem to be joint products. In other words, a desirable result is accompanied by a negative one. An example of this is the pollution and exhaustion of Journal ~fBusiness Ethics 8: 695-743, 1989. © 1989 KluwerAcademic Publishers.Printed in the Netherlands.