Business and Professional Ethics Journal

Volume 30, Issue 3/4, 2011

Three Major Challenges for Business and Economic Ethics in the Next Ten Years
Wealth Creation, Human Rights, and Active Involvement of the World’s Religions

Given the enormous changes in the ways we will live together on the planet Earth, business and economic ethics, with its considerable developments since the 1980s, is called to ask itself what major challenges lay ahead for it in the next ten years. It seems three major challenges have emerged with increasing clarity, urgency, and importance. They concern all levels of business, from the personal to the organizational and the systemic level and likely will become even more important in the future. In three sections, the paper explicates the following challenges: (a) a rich and comprehensive understanding of wealth creation as the purpose of business and economics; (b) the guarantee of securing all human rights to all people; and (c) the active involvement of the world’s religions in meeting the challenges of creating wealth and securing human rights.