Precis for Ties that Bind

We wrote the book, Ties that Bind, out of our conviction that answering today’s questions require a new approach to business ethics, an approach that exposes the implicit understandings or "contracts" that bind industries, companies, and economic systems into moral communities. It is in these economic communities, and in the often unspoken understandings that provide their ethical glue, that we believe many of the answers to business ethics quandaries lie. Further, we think that answering such questions requires the use of a yet deeper, and universal "contract" superseding even individual ones. The theory that combines both these deeper and thinner kinds of contracts we label “Integrative Social Contracts Theory,” or "ISCT" for short.