Why is Business Ethics important? What impact has unethical resp. illegal behavior on companies and economies? We will start to look into the data about illegal and unethical individual and organizational behavior.

Stakeholder management is the process of managing the expectations of all groups and people who have an interest in a project, organization or business.

The topics, which still engage and bother us are as old as the world (this doesn't give humankind a very good testimonial on the ability to solve problems once and for all).

Culture has a powerful effect on how people in an organization behave and act. It shapes to a large extent how individuals and organizations take decisions.

Organizations introduce CSR programs to be able to cope with moral, ethical and stakeholder requirements.

The research of Behavioral Economists have unveiled a lot of myths about how people - and organizations - take decisions. Human decisions are to a certain extent always irrational. Researchers have found that executive management to a very large extent take decisions based on gut feelings - which means only on individual experiences in the past. This is a special challenge for organizations. Neuroscience also tells us how easy it is to manipulate memory - this includes the supply of false or at least flawed or incomplete data. So how can modern leaders and managers make use of the current research and learn to make better decisions which better fit with future challenges?

The rising inequality and destruction of the middle class in Western economies has a negative impact on democracy and national economies in general. Firms need to develop a clear set of values and propositions on how to deal with the challenges posed by globalization.

Illicit financial flows from developing countries and ongoing strategies of criminal organizations to somehow fuel "dirty" money into the regular legal economy pose an enormous risk for our societies. The finance industry is still not willing to do whatever is needed to prevent money laundering for organized crime, terrorists and other illegal market players.

Digitalization gives all sorts of criminals new opportunities. It affects businesses as victims but it also offers them new business models to gain illegal profits or to encourage unethical behavior.

Corruption creates cleptocracies - oligarchies, which create a deeply rooted inequality. This leads to injustice, anger and finally terrorism.

The reasons for the economic crisis in 2008 were excessive risk taking in the finance industry based on the creation of complex finance products, which in the end nobody really understood.

Tax avoidance and tax evasion takes trillions of dollars out of countries. "In the United States, corporations book 20% of their profits in tax havens – a tenfold increase since the 1980s – and tax avoidance reduces corporate tax revenues by up to a third. Globally, 8% of the world’s personal financial wealth is held offshore, costing more than $200bn to governments annually. Despite ambitious policy initiatives, profit shifting to tax havens and offshore wealth are rising." (Zuman, 2014)