Abstract The relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics has long been a puzzling issue. Unlike the traditional way of clarifying the relationship through identifying and comparing the extant definitions of the two terms, this study addresses and compares CSR and business ethics from three perspectives (basic concepts, academic fields, and social movements) at two analytical levels (in practice and in theory). Three conclusions are reached: ①the relationship between the CSR concept and the business ethics concept is different from both the relationship of the CSR field and the business ethics field and the relationship of CSR movement and business ethics movement;②within the relationships of the two concepts, fields and movements, the relationship in practice is different from that in theory; ③CSR and business ethics are neither totally independent nor that one includes the other. Rather, they have similarities and differences.
