摘要：Business ethics is growing in importance in both academic writing and in corporate policy and practice. Yet, in spite of the importance of finance as a component of business relatively little has been written about ethics in finance. In particular trade credit has not been subjected to ethical analysis. This paper develops an analysis of the ethics of trade credit through a focus on payment «virtues». Payment virtue in organizations should include not only prompt payment, but also quick payment. However, speed (slowness) of payment, as measured by the number of days’ credit taken, is a misleading indicator of the commendableness of a firm’s behaviour because of differences in the supply chain characteristics of different industries. The other novel aspect of our analysis is to go beyond a focus on the buying firm to introduce into the picture the responsibilities of the firm supplying the goods or services and credit. It is a financial problem with an ethical component in which we emphasize the operational aspects of trade credit. Some countries, such as UK have introduced some initiatives to encourage better payment behaviour by companies. The possibility of implementing similar initiatives in Spain is considered.
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