The Honorable Merchant – Between Modesty and Risk-Taking

This volume explores the concept of the honest merchant, taking a broad perspective and covering a wide range of aspects. It looks at the different types of “honest merchant” conceptions originating from different cultures and literary traditions. The book covers Japanese, Islamic, Scandinavian, Russian, German, Spanish, as well as other aspects, and studies different disciplinary backgrounds of the honest merchant, such as philosophical, economic, neuroethical, sociological and literary ones.
The concept of the honest merchant has a long tradition in business ethics. In the Hanseatic League and in medieval Italy, the ideal of the honest businessman was taught since the late Middle Ages. It originated during a time when travelling merchants were often regarded with a sceptical eye. The honest merchants of their time however held clear principles in their business and took responsibility for their community. In later times, the religious notions of the concept lost their pivotal place to reason and morality. This book goes beyond the tradition of discussing business ethics in association with concepts from the Hanseatic League and medieval Italy, and puts the central concept of business ethics in a much greater perspective.

• Honest Businessman
• Virtues and Corporate Social Responsibility
• Legend of the Excellent Businessman
• Building Public Trust
• Regulation for Sustainability
• Dignity of the Merchant
• Moralistic Merchant
• Honesty in Medical Professions
• Development of Homo Oeconomicus
• Ethos of the Honest Businessman
• Honesty and Economic Action
• From Fraudster to Honest Businessman

• Chair of Business Ethics, Technical University of Munich, München, Germany

  Christoph Lütge

• Romanisches Seminar, Universität Münster, Münster, Germany

  Christoph Strosetzki

Christoph Luetge holds the Peter Löscher Chair of Business Ethics at Technische Universität München. He has written and edited a number of books including Order Ethics or Moral Surplus: What Holds a Society Together? (Lexington, 2015), Experimental Ethics (co-editor, Palgrave, 2014), Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics (editor, Springer, 2013). He has published numerous articles on various aspects of business ethics, general ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of economics. He has a particular interest both in experimental studies as well as in the role of competition for ethics. He founded the Munich Lecture in Business Ethics series and serves as a member of the Ethics Advisory Board of the European Medical Information Framework and of the Advisory Council of the Bavarian School of Public Policy. 

Policies and ethics