Hard Like Water: Ethics in Business

Robert W. Sexty is a professor of commerce and business administration
at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the author of Canadian
Business: Issues and Stakeholders.

It is not until page 14 that we get an explanation for the title Hard
Like Water: water is a complex substance, as is ethical performance in
business. A prologue outlines the author’s concept of ethics and the
book’s two main objectives: to illustrate the extent to which values
penetrate business, and to stress the social character of business for
which the starting point is morality and ethics.

Each chapter contains “old” and “new” tales of business ethics.
The old tales describe an amoral way of doing business that persists to
this day. The new tales show ethical values at work in specific business
contexts. Chapters 1 through 6 focus on internal business (for example,
values relating to owning, managing, and marketing), while Chapters 7
through 10 deal with external fields such as the natural environment,
social and international values, and planning for the future.

The intended readership is not clear. Academics would not consider the
book sufficiently theoretical, while students would require assistance
to interpret the approach used. The usefulness of the book to
businesspeople is also questionable. It contains interesting tales but
not enough information on how to encourage ethical behavior in
organizations.