Notable E-Book: Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society

Sawyer Library added the Sage eReference Collection about a year ago, and we have found it to be a good way to search across many useful encyclopedias and reference handbooks from Sage, a major publisher with great strengths in the social sciences.

Within the constraints of budget, we hope to add a new updating collection of reference works each year. One such update was rolled into the collection recently. This 2007 and 2008 set includes new Sage encyclopedias on everything from Political Communication to Cancer and Society to 21st Century Psychology to Organization Studies.

One of the new encyclopedias is the Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society. Covering many topics related to corporate responsibility and governance, as well as the deeper philosophical issues related to how business operations impact humanity, this resource is a good starting place for either a quick overview of a known topic, or a means of browsing for topics related to a general concept.

For example, if I search the word sweatshops in the opening page search box

I get three pages of (ranked by relevance) entry hits that include that term. These range from an entry specifically on sweatshops to other related topics like Nike, Business Ethics in Developing Countries, the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), and Moral Relativism. We even pull up a historical entry on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

Obviously, an academic term paper should not be written completely from encyclopedia entries--found in either online or paper format. But for those interested in getting a basic introduction to a variety of subjects related to business ethics, doing some browsing or searching in this new encyclopedia can be a useful step in the research process.

[FIND the Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society by searching the title in our Online Catalog, or through the Sage eReference link in Databases by Subject, E-Books category.]