Andreas Suchanek

• From time to time, Business Ethics faces the somewhat odd challenge to justify its own existence. Horst Albach, for example, published in 2005 a paper which states: “Business Administration is Business Ethics.” (“Betriebswirtschaftslehre ist Unternehmensethik.”) With this assertion he expresses his conviction that there is no need for an own discipline called Business Ethics. This paper tries to show that, contrary to Albach’s assertion, Business Ethics plays an own and crucial part in business administration and management education. To substantiate this claim, three approaches from S. Ghoshal, P. Ulrich, and J. Wieland are presented as positions opposite to Albach. As a synthesis, it is argued that manager need specific competencies to organize corporate integrity as well as to meet the normative expectations from stakeholders in order to maintain the corporation’s “license to operate”.