Business ethics & social capital: conceptual approaches

Abstract

The objective of this essay is to demonstrate bonds between the literature which deals with business ethics and the one that deals with social capital, beginning with Sánchez Vázquez’s focus on moral and ethics, in order to contribute with the perception of political, institutional, corporate and community processes, turned to the broadening of the sense of citizenship. In addition, it intends to point out the borderline of such bonds, concluding that the social capital, generated in the processes of constitution of a corporate moral of partnership and social responsibility, tends to have a low intensity in relation to certain stakeholders, while it accentuates and/or maintains a high intensity in relation to others. Such division tends to be more accentuated in countries and regions whose history has forged civic institutions and cultures in which freedom and moral responsibility maintain weak bonds. Nevertheless, in counterpart, the constitution of norms of social responsibility in the companies, such as SA 8000, under the control of governments and citizens, has been impelling the generation of social capital in increasingly extended scopes, reinforcing, thus, those bonds