美国对企业伦理的系统研究始于本世纪70年代。在本世纪70年代前,企业伦理学始终没能作为伦理学中一个独特部分引起西方伦理学家的重视,企业伦理学的研究,不仅零散而无系统,而且始终停留在一种抽象的层次上:较多述及宏观的经济制度的道德性质,而很少面对具体企业活动中的道德问题;重视对概念、命题的性质和意义的分析,而忽略企业中机构和个体的具体道德活动。70年代以来,西方伦理学界兴起了一股抛弃远离生活的元伦理学、研究现实的道德现象、使伦理学参加和干预现实社会生活的浪潮,在这一浪潮中,美国的企业伦理学应运而生。1974年11月,美国一些伦理学家在堪萨斯大学召开了首届企业伦理学讨论会,标志着美国企业伦理学的诞生。这次会议之后,出现了一系列企业伦理学方面的教科书和专著。如文森特·巴里的《企业中的道德问题》; The systematic study of business ethics in the United States began in the 1970s. In the 1970s, the corporate ethics has failed to attract the attention of western ethicists as a unique part of ethics. The study of corporate ethics is not only fragmented but not systematic, and it always stays at an abstract level : More about the moral character of the macroscopic economic system, but seldom faces the moral problems in the concrete enterprise activities; pays attention to the analysis of the nature and meaning of the concepts and propositions while ignoring the concrete moral activities of the institutions and individuals in the enterprises. Since the 1970s, western ethics has risen from the meta-ethics of abandoning life away, studying the moral phenomena of reality and enlisting ethics to intervene in and tide over the reality of social life. In this wave, American business ethics should come into operation Health. In November 1974, some American ethicists held the first corporate ethics seminar at the University of Kansas, marking the birth of American business ethics. After this conference, there appeared a series of textbooks and monographs on business ethics. Such as Vincent Barry’s “Moral Issues in Business”;