Abstract
There is increasing interest in ethical questions in marketing. Most contributions to the marketing ethics literature refer to business-to-consumer situations and take an actor-focused perspective. Ethical issues arising on business markets characterized by inter-organizational exchange and network structures have received much less attention. This paper attempts to reduce this gap. It focuses on the specific question under what conditions exchange between companies can be qualified as ethical. For this purpose, the authors review articles providing sets of criteria for evaluating the ethicality of relational exchange. Using a case study they then challenge these criteria. They conclude that concepts such as trust, equity, responsibility, or commitment are not sufficient for judging the ethicality of exchange. Propositions are made as to how the current perspective on ethical business exchanges should be revised. The authors suggest going beyond the current thought world by considering externalities, stressing the norm of harmonization with the social matrix, and adopting a stakeholder-network perspective.