Patricia Werhane

Global Economic Ethic is a stunning set of principles. However, in this response I shall raise some questions concerning its implementation. First, from the perspective of a global Western-based transnational corporation, there are ambiguities in the principles and implementation in practice. Second, from a non-Western cultural perspective, one has to to think about whether and how these principles could be interpreted in different non-European/non–North American cultural settings. Finally, the biggest challenge is whether or how we as individuals, as executives and managers, and as part of the global community work to change political climates of corruption, domination, patronage, and protectionism, climates that hinder or preclude going forward with the adoption and operationalization of these principles everywhere.

During recent years, the principle and practice of employment-at-will have been under attack. While progress has been madein eroding the practice, the principle still governs the philosophical assumptions underlying employment practices in the United States,and, indeed, EAW has been promulgated as one of the ways to address economic ills in other countries. This paper will briefly reviewthe major critiques of EAW. Given the failure of these arguments to erode the underpinnings of EAW, we shall suggest new avenues forapproaching employment issues to achieve the desirable goal of employee dignity and respect.

The societal and ethical impacts of emerging technological and business systems cannot entirely be foreseen; therefore, management of these innovations will require at least some ethicists to work closely with researchers. This is particularly critical in the development of new systems because the maximum degrees of freedom for changing technological direction occurs at or just after the point of breakthrough; that is also the point where the long-term implications are hardest to visualize. Recent work on shared expertise in Science & Technology Studies (STS) can help create productive collaborations among scientists, engineers, ethicists and other stakeholders as these new systems are designed and implemented. But collaboration across these disciplines will be successful only if scientists, engineers, and ethicists can communicate meaningfully with each other. The establishment of a trading zone coupled with moral imagination present one method for such collaborative communication.