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The purpose of this paper is to develop a narrative framework for doing empirical research into business ethics and shows, through two examples, how the framework can be applied in practice in this context. The focus is on interview-based research.

A theoretical research based on literature review was conducted.

In the developed narrative framework, two main kinds of analysis are distinguished: an analysis of the narrative and a narrative analysis. An analysis of the narrative is a matter of classifying and producing taxonomies out of the data. The purpose of a narrative analysis is to construct a story or stories based on the data. Narrative analysis differs from the analysis of narratives in that the story does not exist prior to the analysis, but is created during the analysis.

The proposed narrative framework helps those doing empirical research into business ethics avoid simplistic “black and white” interpretations of their material, and helps them to show that ethical realities in the business world are often complex, various and multiple.

The paper offers a methodological framework for those doing qualitative research into business ethics which will increase the quality and rigor of their studies.

A value of the narrative approach is that the stories offer researchers an entry point to understanding the complexity of ethics and how people make sense of this complexity. The paper shows in detail how the methods presented can be used in practice in empirical research.

This paper analyzes the concept of racism in the context of business ethics and globalization. It first introduces three ethical traditions to understand moral issues in business: deontological, utilitarian and virtue ethics. Then it discusses about the challenges and demands that globalization has set to multicultural and multinational business operations. Third, it clarifies how racism works when it is understood as an ideology‐based phenomenon. It argues that there is a great value of knowing how racism works for the development of an anti‐racist and nondiscriminating organization. Although any of the three traditions on ethical thinking does not give direct answer to the question of how to develop and manage an anti‐racist business organization, but connected with the understanding of racism they can be useful tools for the leader of a multicultural organization.

This paper aims to construct an approach referred to as “the participatory narrative” for organizational learning in diverse organizations. The approach is grounded in an understanding of organizational learning as the process of social construction which is narratively mediated.

The participatory narrative is constructed theoretically. Additionally, the approach and its potential use are illustrated by means of a practical example.

It is shown that the participatory narrative enables interplay between various perspectives of diverse people. It makes it possible to overcome the temporal and spatial limits of organisational learning situations and helps to question self‐evident assumptions about diverse people and makes such assumptions visible and negotiable.

The application of the participatory narrative is only highlighted with the help of an illustrative example.

The participatory narrative helps to stimulate people's empathetic orientation, which provides a basis for responses to the experiences and world‐views of other people. Thus, it helps people in diverse organizations to learn to become capable of imagining not only their own position but also the position of others.

This article contributes to prior literature by developing an awareness of the narrative mechanisms of language use in the field of organizational learning. The paper shows also that the transformative dynamic of narratively mediated organizational learning lies in the empowering recognition that organization members understand that they are the active authors of the stories.