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This introduction to the 20-year anniversary issue of Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations notes that the role of organisations in society, the international and multidisciplinary scope of business ethics and the importance of narrative, issues identified in the early volumes, remain important.

This article considers what has happened in the 20 years since REIO was founded. The article argues that in sub-Saharan Africa many of those self-same issues currently continue to plague Africans, and that these issues urgently need to be addressed if we are going to improve morality in Africa. In exploring these issues, we considered the circumstances which the Victorian novelist, Anthony Trollope (1815–1882), experienced when he lived in Ireland during the Irish famine. Our article argues as to the very similar circumstances which led to the Irish famine and, currently, lead to the recurrent famines in sub-Saharan Africa. Trollope explored both the causes and the ramifications of the Irish famine in his novel Castle Richmond. According to Trollope, many of the effects of the Irish famine could have been averted if those in the community able to help had had the necessary moral willpower to do so. Trollope was an extremely keen fox-hunter and argued as to the communal benefits of fox-hunting. The article also considers a current devotee of fox-hunting, the Oxford philosopher Roger Scruton, and we explore Scruton’s arguments as to the benefits of local communities. We argue that Scruton’s conservative arguments have much in common with that of the renowned communitarian, Michael Sandel. And that if their arguments were seriously considered much of what the Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo fears for her fellow sub-Saharan Africans might be avoided.

The authors agree with Miravalle (2017) that ‘communications technology has brought with it a radical challenge to the virtue of modesty’ (p. 173). Because of the normalisation of online boasting, it is necessary for students, who are or soon will be employed, to understand the implications of posting their successes on social media. After discussing the pervasiveness of boastful posts and reviewing the research indicating the inverse association between individuals’ routine exposure to posts depicting the curated lives and accomplishments of friends and acquaintances and their emotional well-being, we explore what the virtue of modesty entails. Then, the authors discuss how they have raised their students’ awareness that modesty matters, clarified for them what it is, and given them techniques to help them work towards it.

Neither moral philosophy nor history provides a satisfactory explanation for Oskar Schindler’s extraordinary rescue of more than 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark does. Although Schindler’s Ark is technically a work of fiction, that generic label obscures its contribution as a fictionalised account of true events. By using a novelist’s tools to tell an historical story, Keneally allows us to make inferences as to the motives of his protagonist and thereby helps us to understand what propelled the moral behaviour of Oskar Schindler.