Jun 3, 2026

The Vision of the Firm

Timothy Fort and Suneal Bedi

Hosted by Alfred Marcus

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Summary

This coursebook, written by top scholars in the business law and ethics area, contains the complete summary of the leading theories of business ethics today. The book’s approach to business ethics aims to clarify values, to create ethical awareness, to provide a decision-making model, to show how to apply those models to cutting edge business dilemmas, and to address how to build ethical business cultures.

This book is designed to help students create a skill in ethical decision-making and building ethical culture. The book draws students into the material by providing experiences that allow them to explore the various ethical dilemmas that arise in business contexts and how to reason through them. It provides student examples of how to apply ethical frameworks and decision-making models so that the "how-to" is clear.

The new edition has been updated to make it more relevant, interesting, and rigorous to business ethics students. This edition dramatically reconceptualizes leading ethical theories and brings into the textbook a whole set of new current dilemmas in business ethics. It also provides a significantly edited and expanded moral and political philosophy background for students, and draws dilemmas from marketing, management, operations, finance, business economics, and technology. It shows students a step-by-step guide on how to resolve those dilemmas as well.

Your Host

Alfred Marcus

As the Edson Spencer Professor at the Carlson School, I’ve spent my career helping students, scholars, and executives understand how companies succeed, why they fail, and how they can rise again. I’ve authored over 20 books and numerous articles in leading journals. My writings span immigrant entrepreneurship, demography, corporate turnarounds, and sustainability among other topics. My latest book explores how firms like Dell and Best Buy reinvented themselves. It is called Comeback: Can Great Firms Rise Again? It is published by the University of Toronto Press and will be available at the end of March.

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