Daniel T. Ostas

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations, enacted in 1991, establishes a reduced fine for a corporation convicted of a regulatory offense if the corporation had an 'effective compliance and ethics program' at the time of the offense. Prior to enactment, very few Fortune 500 companies had such programs; within a few years, they all did. This sudden growth points to a financial motive. After all, if compliance had been driven by ethics, these programs should have already been in place. Ethics of Risk Management highlights how corporate practice tends to focus on the firm's financial risks, leaving little to no role for ethical reflection. The book finds this financial approach to compliance lacking and brings ethical issues to the fore. Drawing on multiple case studies, it offers an alternative approach to compliance that tempers risk management with a nuanced jurisprudential view coupled with robust notions of the firm's political obligations.

The book Corporate Taxation and Social Responsibility explains the bases for the polarized positions in the debate on multinational corporate tax strategies. Based on legal theory, political philosophy, and international tax law, the authors find strong arguments to require corporate executives to carry out their tax strategies in a responsible way, that is, in a way that is difficult to criticize with ethical arguments. International tax strategies such as debt-push-down and the double-Irish-with-a-Dutch-sandwich are analyzed and discussed in relation to anti-avoidance regulations and possible legal applications. The concepts of social responsibility and business ethics are discussed in depth and related to corporate tax. In short, this book explains in a simple and accessible manner the challenges facing today's international tax regime, and it presents possible solutions to meet these challenges.