This paper analyses the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations in the 2030 ‘Transforming the World’ Agenda, from 2015, as a contribution to business ethics and ethical economy. The Sustainable Development Goals combine political aims with visions of economic development and social justice and are therefore important for business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Thus, the Sustainable Development Goals constitute a driver for ethical economic development and social change. However, there is a need for critical analysis of the possibilities of Sustainable Development Goals of functioning as a vision and a strategic tool for management and governance. The aim of the paper is to investigate these possibilities of the Sustainable Development Goals of contributing to business ethics and ethical economy with mobilization of business, public institutions and organizations, and non-governmental organizations. After presenting the Sustainable Development Goals, the paper critically discusses their scope and potential for corporate social responsibility, business ethics and corporate sustainability. This involves the problem of how the Sustainable Development Goals can contribute to a transformation towards another economy. As a contribution to business ethics, the paper elaborates on partnerships for Sustainable Development Goals, sustainable performance management systems and the Sustainable Development Goal Compass with the aim of interpreting Sustainable Development Goals as a basis for progressive business ethics models.

This article provides a general framework for ethics in service industries. The argument is that the four ethical principles of autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability can have significance as basic ethical principles that are guiding ideas of business ethics in service industries. In particular, ethical principles are important in the industries of health care and other services that deal directly with human beings. Indeed, ethical principles are important for treating customers, users and consumers of service industries firms, but they also apply to other stakeholders of the service firm. This article shows that the basic ethical principles do not only apply at the individual level, but also get their significance at the organisational level. Thus, the ethical ideas of autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability are very important in order to propose an ethical framework for value-driven management of service industries firms. They are important as the foundation of justice and responsibility in service industry organisations.

Case studies can be an important methodology for ethics and philosophy in humanistic management and liberal education as well as in the social sciences because they integrate a deeper, reflective, philosophical, and ethical understanding of the organization. A case study approach based on philosophy of management contributes to putting into practice the Carnegie Foundation report Rethinking Undergraduate Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession. This approach is both inductive and deductive and very different from a soft Socratic approach to case studies such as the one often used in business schools following the Harvard method, wherein students are supposed to get knowledge through the reading of a case prepared by the teacher or from a business textbook. The aim of the case study is to analyze a concrete case and get general knowledge through the integrated analysis of the different ethical, philosophical, and economic dimensions of the case. This article presents an argument for case studies that highlight ethics and philosophy in the following parts: (1) Introduction, (2) Historical and Philosophical Definitions of Case Studies, (3) The Quality and Structure of the Case Study, (4) Scientific Validity of Case Studies, (5) Application and Use of Case Studies in Philosophy of Management and Ethics of Organizations, and (6) Conclusion.