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Title: Integrating Micro, Meso and Macro Levels in Business Ethics
Author(s): JEURISSEN, Roland
Journal: Ethical Perspectives
Volume: 4    Issue: 4   Date: December 1997   
Pages: 246-254
DOI: 10.2143/EP.4.4.562986

Abstract :
My title refers to a very modern problem, for what else is modernization than a process of rational differentiation of society in autonomous, mutually isolated sub-spheres, to the point where no one any longer knows what the unity of it all is? We differentiate, we specialize, we hyperspecialize, and then we get puzzled over the fragmentation we have produced around us, between ourselves and even within ourselves. Look at our own area. You cannot even specialize in practical ethics any more. You have to limit your attention to medical ethics, for example, the ethics of engineering, or business ethics. And within business ethics, my own field of research, the homo universalis is also threatened with extinction. You can do marketing ethics, ethics of finance or computer ethics, until you finally become the typical ‘expert’: someone who knows almost everything about almost nothing.

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