“A Better Way to Think About Business: How Personal Integrity Leads to Corporate Success” delivers exactly what its title promises, and has already helped me through a couple of ethical dilemmas that I’ve had to resolve in the course of my job. This book is very clearly written and provokes clear thinking on the subject of business ethics. It does not insult your intelligence by stringing slogans together and calling the result a ‘business ethic’. (Personal note: I am so bloody sick of books that proport to teach me ‘Managing by Values’ and turn out to be fluff and slogans and bad writing to boot. Business ethics is a very complex and gut-wrenching subject, and some authors need to treat their readers with a bit more honor and dignity.)

Sorry for the above tirade. Read this book. If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, dip into the ‘Catalog of Business Virtues’ at the end of the book and try to schedule a virtue per day to think about on the long commute home. I’m sure I’ll keep going back to Robert Solomon for a ‘better way to think about’ the really tough business situations.
Rating: 5 / 5

This is a remarkable book in that it lays a sensible, philosophical foundation and builds a compelling, practical case for the place of virtue in business. His definition, that “a virtue, in essence, is a value embodied and built into action”, leads the reader to understand the true basis for a successful strategic planning process. Solomon emphasizes the need for corporations to see themselves as communities, people- rather than profit-driven, and, thus, to change to “a better way of thinking”. An excellent, careful, scholarly treatment presented in a linear, holistic, engaging style, this book, taken to the boardrooms of the world, can only change business for the better. It is a must-read for those who care to maintain their sanity in the multi-faceted corporate world. The book is aptly named!
Rating: 5 / 5

Robert Solomon uses an Aristotelian approach i.e. he is quite cognitively oriented. His books appeal to the logical mind, but the implications certainly extend to larger contexts and areas that are important, but more difficult to articulate. This larger processing and application is often left to the reader.

As multinational corporations gain more power to do good and ill on large scales, it is increasingly important for business leaders to look at the ethical implications of how they do business, the economic landscape and even the metaphysics that underlies our economics. This book is certainly a right step in that direction. I would also suggest that we look at how we compensate our CEOs. For example, how would things be different if we compensated CEOs more heavily on their five and ten year performance rather on the very next quarter’s results.

Rating: 4 / 5