Business ethics names both a phenomenon (the ethics espoused and practiced in business) and the field of study of that phenomenon (the serious study of business ethics). As a branch of ethics (or moral philosophy), the field of business ethics is interested in how judgments of right and wrong, good and bad, moral obligation and responsibility, rights and duties, and the like, are made and justified. As a branch of applied ethics it explores how these judgments are carried out in the specific domain of work, commerce, and economic activity.

As a descriptive enterprise, business ethics is an analytical exercise in understanding and explaining how people and organizations make their ethical judgments and decisions. As a prescriptive enterprise, business ethics seeks to arrive at defensible, normative, moral judgments of business matters in ways that are helpful to the actual practice of business. Business ethics overlaps significantly...