-
15Responsibility, Rights and Welfare: The Theory of the Welfare StatePhilosophical Books 30 (4): 250-251. 1989.
-
Employment at will and employee rightsIn George G. Brenkert & Tom L. Beauchamp (eds.), The Oxford handbook of business ethics, Oxford University Press. 2010.
-
5The Business of Consumption: Environmental Ethics and the Global Economy (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield. 1998.At the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation, a host of noted environmentalists and business ethicists examine ethical issues in consumption from the points of view of environmental sustainability, economic development, and free enterprise. Visit our website for sample chapters!
-
163Mental Models, Moral Imagination and System Thinking in the Age of GlobalizationJournal of Business Ethics 78 (3): 463-474. 2008.After experiments with various economic systems, we appear to have conceded, to misquote Winston Churchill that "free enterprise is the worst economic system, except all the others that have been tried." Affirming that conclusion, I shall argue that in today's expanding global economy, we need to revisit our mind-sets about corporate governance and leadership to fit what will be new kinds of free enterprise. The aim is to develop a values-based model for corporate governance in this age of globa…Read more
-
50Moral Imagination, Trading Zones, and the Role of the Ethicist in NanotechnologyNanoEthics 3 (3): 185-195. 2009.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. Rece…Read more
-
115Employment-at-Will, Employee Rights, and Future Directions for EmploymentBusiness Ethics Quarterly 13 (2): 113-130. 2003.Abstract:During recent years, the principle and practice of employment-at-will have been under attack. While progress has been made in 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 review the major critiques of EAW. Given the failure of these arguments to erode the underpinnings of EAW…Read more
-
17Mergers, Acquisitions and the Market for Corporate ControlPublic Affairs Quarterly 4 (1): 81-96. 1990.
-
21Conflicts of Interest and Conflicts of CommitmentProfessional Ethics, a Multidisciplinary Journal 4 (3): 47-81. 1995.
-
16IntroductionThe Ruffin Series of the Society for Business Ethics 1 4-4. 1998.This special issue marks the first in a series of special issues of Business Ethics Quarterly that are sponsored by the Ruffin Foundation and the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics at the University of Virginia. The editors of Business Ethics Quarterly want to thank the Ruffin Foundation and the Olsson Foundation for their generosity in funding these issues for our subscribers at no extra cost.
-
19Accountability and Employee RightsInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 1 (3): 15-26. 1983.
-
69Organization Ethics in HealthcareCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 9 (2): 145-146. 2000.Bioethics, clinical ethics, and professional ethics are mature, well-developed fields of applied ethics that focus on medical research, patient autonomy and patient care, patient–healthcare professional relationships, and issues that arise in clinical and other medical settings. However, despite these developments, little attention has been paid to the organizational aspects of healthcare in these fields. This is surprising, because in the last 30 years healthcare has become more and more instit…Read more
-
5Fraud and deception: A response to Gedeon RossouwBusiness Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 9 (4). 2000.This response addresses the question: how can ethical values play a role in combating fraud? Three points are made. Firstly, ethical values are both self‐ and other‐related. Secondly, changing the prevalence of fraudulent behaviours requires not only a reduction in opportunity for fraud but also a change in mindset of the perpetrators. Thirdly, that change in mindset involves the recognition that there are personal and organizational advantages to be gained by not contributing to or abetting fra…Read more
-
26Proposition: Shared Value as an Incomplete Mental ModelBusiness Ethics Journal Review 36-43. 2013.
-
62Wittgenstein and moral realismJournal of Value Inquiry 26 (3): 381-393. 1992.I argue, contra Sabina Lovibond, that one cannot defend a viable form of moral realism from the perspective of linguistic conventionalism. Appealing to the later Wittgenstein, I argue that Wittgenstein's alleged linguistic conventionalism rests on the objective ground of the notion of a rule. While Wittgenstein acknowledges that the subjective and social context out of which we operate precludes getting at reality independent of a perspective, neither is he an anti-realist nor does he replace tr…Read more
-
113Moral imagination and systems thinkingJournal of Business Ethics 38 (1-2). 2002.Taking the lead from Susan Wolf's and Linda Emanuel's work on systems thinking, and developing ideas from Moberg's, Seabright's and my work on mental models and moral imagination, in this paper I shall argue that what is often missing in management decision-making is a systems approach. Systems thinking requires conceiving of management dilemmas as arising from within a system with interdependent elements, subsystems, and networks of relationships and patterns of interaction. Taking a systems ap…Read more
-
30Ethical Leadership in 21st Century Corporate AmericaJournal of Business Ethics 66 (2-3): 145-146. 2006.
-
28The myth of minimums: Response to “ordinary reasonable care is not the minimum for engineers”Science and Engineering Ethics 7 (2): 298-302. 2001.
-
149Engineers and management: The challenge of the Challenger incident (review)Journal of Business Ethics 10 (8). 1991.The Challenger incident was a result of at least four kinds of difficulties: differing perceptions and priorities of the engineers and management at Thiokol and at NASA, a preoccupation with roles and role responsibilities on the part of engineers and managers, contrasting corporate cultures at Thiokol and its parent, Morton, and a failure both by engineers and by managers to exercise individual moral responsibility. I shall argue that in the Challenger case organizational structure, corporate c…Read more
-
34Justice, Impartiality, and Reciprocity A Response to Edwin HartmanBusiness Ethics Quarterly 4 (3): 287-290. 1994.
-
154Business ethics and the origins of contemporary capitalism: Economics and ethics in the work of Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer (review)Journal of Business Ethics 24 (3). 1991.Both Adam Smith and Herbert spencer, albeit in quite different ways, have been enormously influential in what we today take to be philosophies of modern capitalism. Surprisingly it is Spencer, not Smith, who is the individualist, perhaps an egoist, and supports a "night watchman" theory of the state. Smith's concept of political economy is a notion that needs to be revisited, and Spencer's theory of democratic workplace management offers a refreshing twist on contemporary libertarianism.
-
4Skepticism, Rules, and Private LanguagesHumanities Press. 1992.Patricia Werhane synthesizes much of later Wittgensteinian thought, bringing together disparate arguments into a coherent text. Keeping in mind what Wittgenstein set out to accomplish in his later writings, the introduction of new material on the private language arguments, and the philosophical significance of these claims, Werhane develops the thesis that the notion of a rule is such a constitutive of language that a private language is impossible. Such a conclusion challenges many contemporar…Read more
Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |