ABSTRACT
The author in this chapter raises the question whether business ethics is appropriately characterised by calling it a branch of applied ethics. Business ethics as a discipline is commonly conceived as a branch of applied ethics, the field of ethical expertise, in which general moral theories, insights and methods are used to clarify normative issues arising in specific sectors of human behaviour. The author in the chapter proposes a way of tackling the relation of ethics and business, by elaborating what he will call a “domain-specific” ethics, based on the action patterns that characterize market relations. Together, the principles of equality, honesty, reciprocity, justice and beneficence cover, to a very large extent, the domain of market transactions and constitute what may be called a domain-specific market morality. To connect business ethics exclusively to business virtues is a unnecessary limitation, for the domain of ethics, also of business ethics, is broader than the one that is covered by acts of virtue.
