Beyond Rules in Society and Business

New Horizons in Leadership Studies series

Verner C. Petersen, formerly Research Professor, Department of Organisation and Management, The Aarhus School of Business and Leader of CREDO (the Centre for Research in Ethics and Decision-making in Organizations), Denmark

This provocative book challenges traditional tenets about behavioral regulation in society as well as in business. Verner Petersen asserts that attempts to solve ethical problems by creating explicit guidelines, codes and rules discourage individual reflection and responsibility. Likewise, attempts to put important aspects of human life into tabular form, by devising schemes for counting everything that matters, have serious flaws, leading to further erosion of individual responsibility and insight.

“超越Rules in Society and Business is a wide-ranging, sensible, accessible book. Petersen uses interesting European examples, such as the old tale of Michael Kohlhaas’s doomed quest for justice. Because business discourse and practices have been insinuated into virtually all aspects of modern life, the book is highly relevant to media that should be exposing the sort of shortcomings that Peterson describes.’
– Muriel R. Friedman, Journal of Mass Media Ethics