-
23Why Saying "I'm Sorry" Isn't Good EnoughBusiness Ethics Quarterly 23 (2): 239-268. 2013.The number of corporate apologies has increased dramatically during the past decade. This article delves into the ethics of apologies offered by chief executive officers (CEOs). It examines ways in which public apologies on the part of a representative (CEO) of a corporate body (the firm) differ from both private, interpersonal apologies, on the one hand, and nation-state/collective apologies, on the other. The article then seeks to ground ethically desirable elements of a corporate apology in t…Read more
-
54Traversing the InfernoBusiness Ethics Quarterly 10 (1): 255-268. 2000.The discipline of business ethics traditionally has paid too much attention to articulating and applying the moral law and has devoted too little thinking to the nature and consequences of evil for our souls. For purposes of this discussion, I shall limit myself to Dante’s vision of evil as a diminution of human being. On his journey through hell, Dante encounters the shades—people who, through their own actions, have rendered themselves less than fully human. This paper concentrates especially …Read more
-
96Ethical issues connected with multi-level marketing schemesJournal of Business Ethics 29 (1-2). 2001.Multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes are one of the fastest growing types of business. However, little has been written about the ethics of MLMs. This oversight is somewhat surprising, especially because some prominent MLMs have been accused of being pyramid schemes. Pyramid schemes were the number one type of internet fraud in 1996, and the fourth most common form of internet fraud in 1997 (National Consumers League, 1997). This paper examines the nature of MLMs and their similarities with and d…Read more
-
27Creative Financial Methods in Giving BackBusiness and Professional Ethics Journal 35 (2-3): 179-197. 2016.Michael Pirron is CEO of Impact Makers, an IT consulting firm based in Virginia. Impact Makers decided to reincorporate as a Benefit Corporation when Virginia passed the legislation. In this interview with Professor Daryl Koehn from DePaul University, Pirron discusses why he chose to reincorporate and their organization’s decision to give all their profits to charity. To do this, Impact Makers set up a new financial innovation to protect the social purpose of the organization. They gave all thei…Read more
-
20Are Benefit Corporations Truly Beneficial?Business and Professional Ethics Journal 35 (2): 165-178. 2016.Michael Hannigan is the CEO and co-founder of Give Something Back Office Supplies, the third largest office supply company on the west coast of the United States. Hannigan began his business in 1991, long before any benefit corporation legislation was enacted. He reincorporated his business as a benefit corporation after California passed such legislation in 2011. On April 23, 2015, he spoke at the 22nd Annual Stakeholder Dialogue Speaker Series convened at the University of St. Thomas, Minneapo…Read more
-
32On Responsibility in China: Understanding and PracticeJournal of Business Ethics 127 (3): 607-622. 2015.“Responsibility” in Chinese consists of two words: “ze” and “ren” . In modern Chinese, although the two words “ze” and “ren” are mostly used as one word, people can still discern the close relationship between ze and right and between ren and the duty associated with a position or a power. In modern life, however, there is a serious problem with these historically close, key relationships. This paper raises the crucial question: how should we understand and deal with the separation of freedom fr…Read more
-
9Local Insights, Global Ethics for Business (edited book)Rodopi. 2001.This book evaluates strategies for managing ethical conflict. Macro-approaches that attribute select values to entire peoples and claim supremacy for these values are suspect. A micro-approach, focusing on the ethics of individual thinkers, is better. The study uses the ethics of Confucius and Tetsuro Watsuji to derive a process-based universal ethic that respects local differences yet is not relativistic.
-
107What can eastern philosophy teach us about business ethics?Journal of Business Ethics 19 (1). 1999.This paper examines what, if anything, "Eastern philosophy" can teach us about business ethics. The whole idea of "Eastern ethics" or so-called "Asian values" is suspect on a number of scores. The paper argues that It is better to refer to specific ideas of particular thinkers influential within one country or tradition. The paper concentrates on the philosophy of two such thinkers – Watsuji Tetsuro of Japan and Confucius. When this more "micro" approach is adopted, we can learn some important l…Read more
-
50East Meets West: Toward a Universal Ethic of Virtue for Global Business (review)Journal of Business Ethics 116 (4): 703-715. 2013.Rudyard Kipling famously penned, “East is East, West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” His poetic line suggests that Eastern and Western cultures are irreconcilably different and that their members engage in fundamentally incommensurable ethical practices. This paper argues that differing cultures do not necessarily operate by incommensurable moral principles. On the contrary, if we adopt a virtue ethics perspective, we discover that East and West are always meeting because their virtues…Read more
-
2The nature of evilPalgrave-Macmillan. 2005.In The Nature of Evil, Daryl Koehn takes us on a sweeping tour of different interpretations of evil. In this timely and serious discussion she argues that evil is not intentional malice, but rather violence that stems from a false sense of self. Violence is not true evil but a symptom of the underlying evil of our failure to really know who we are. Koehn examines situations in which good intentions can have horrific results. She explores such works as The Talented Mr. Ripley , Dante's Inferno , …Read more
-
24Dignity in Western Versus in Chinese Cultures: Theoretical Overview and Practical IllustrationsBusiness and Society Review 113 (4): 477-504. 2008.Dignity is an important concept in ethics. Human rights organizations justify rights by appealing to human dignity. Prominent politicians have cited the need to protect human dignity and urged the founding of international institutions. The concept of human dignity is often used to evaluate and critique the ethics of select practices. In addition, the idea of dignity is used as a universal principle to ground universalist business ethics.This paper argues that there are substantial differences b…Read more
-
7Snow Brand Milk Products (A)Journal of Business Ethics Education 7 103-116. 2010.This three-case series examines the dilemma that faced the Japanese company Snow Brand Milk Products (SBM) as it confronted the task of rebuilding and revitalization after a series of scandals, many self-induced, had threatened the company’s future. The A case begins in spring 2002 when leading consumer activist Nobuko Hiwasa was invited to join Snow Brand’s board of directors. The CEO wanted her to assist in SBM’s revitalization efforts, which were beingimplemented in the wake of two recent sca…Read more
-
55Why Saying "I'm Sorry" Isn't Good EnoughBusiness Ethics Quarterly 23 (2): 239-268. 2013.The number of corporate apologies has increased dramatically during the past decade. This article delves into the ethics of apologies offered by chief executive officers (CEOs). It examines ways in which public apologies on the part of a representative (CEO) of a corporate body (the firm) differ from both private, interpersonal apologies, on the one hand, and nation-state/collective apologies, on the other. The article then seeks to ground ethically desirable elements of a corporate apology in t…Read more
-
98Integrity as a Business AssetJournal of Business Ethics 58 (1-3): 125-136. 2005.. In this post-Enron era, we have heard much talk about the need for integrity. Today’s employees perceive it as being in short supply. A recent survey by the Walker Consulting Firm found that less than half of workers polled thought their senior leaders were people of high integrity. To combat the perceived lack of corporate integrity, companies are stressing their probity. This stress is problematic because executives tend to instrumentalize the value of integrity. This paper argues that integ…Read more
-
77Virtue Ethics, the Firm, and Moral PsychologyBusiness Ethics Quarterly 8 (3): 497-513. 1998.Business ethicists have increasingly used Aristotelian “virtue ethics” to analyze the actions of business people and to explore the question of what the standard of ethical behavior is. These analyses have raised many important issues and opened up new avenuesfor research. But the time has come to examine in some detail possible limitations or weaknesses in virtue ethics. This paper arguesthat Aristotelian virtue ethics is subject to many objections because the psychology implicit within the eth…Read more
-
Ethical issues in human resourcesIn Norman E. Bowie (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Business Ethics, Blackwell. pp. 6--225. 2002.
-
6Creative Financial Methods in Giving BackBusiness and Professional Ethics Journal 35 (2-3): 179-197. 2016.Michael Pirron is CEO of Impact Makers, an IT consulting firm based in Virginia. Impact Makers decided to reincorporate as a Benefit Corporation when Virginia passed the legislation. In this interview with Professor Daryl Koehn from DePaul University, Pirron discusses why he chose to reincorporate and their organization’s decision to give all their profits to charity. To do this, Impact Makers set up a new financial innovation to protect the social purpose of the organization. They gave all thei…Read more
-
91The ethics of business: Moving beyond legalismEthics and Behavior 6 (1). 1996.The economist Milton Friedman argued that business has only one ethical responsibility: Business has a responsibility to employ all available legal means to increase corporate profits owed to stockholders (Friedman, 1993). In this article, I explore why business students find this argument so attractive. I then argue that, as an account of business ethics, Friedman's legalism is both theoretically and practically unsound. I close with some suggestions as to what would constitute a truly ethical …Read more
-
76A Defense of a Thomistic Concept of the Just PriceBusiness Ethics Quarterly 22 (3): 501-526. 2012.Since St. Thomas Aquinas was one of the first scholastics to analyze the idea of a “just price,” economists, economic historians and philosophers interested in the philosophical underpinnings of the market have focused on Aquinas’s writings. One group insists that Aquinas defined the just price as the payment needed to cover sellers’ labor and material costs. A second camp vehemently counters that Aquinas’s just price is simply the going market price. We argue that neither of these views is corr…Read more
-
29Richard Nielsen, the politics of ethics: Methods for acting, learning, and sometimes fighting with others in addressing ethics problems in organizational life (review)Journal of Value Inquiry 32 (4): 565-570. 1998.
-
21Snow Brand Milk Products (A)Journal of Business Ethics Education 7 103-116. 2010.This three-case series examines the dilemma that faced the Japanese company Snow Brand Milk Products (SBM) as it confronted the task of rebuilding and revitalization after a series of scandals, many self-induced, had threatened the company’s future. The A case begins in spring 2002 when leading consumer activist Nobuko Hiwasa was invited to join Snow Brand’s board of directors. The CEO wanted her to assist in SBM’s revitalization efforts, which were beingimplemented in the wake of two recent sca…Read more
-
46Preliminary definitions and distinctions -- Causes of unintended consequences -- The challenges unintended consequences pose for standard moral frameworks -- Possible ethical remedies.
-
14What Form of Business Regulation is Workable?Business and Professional Ethics Journal 23 (1): 43-63. 2004.
-
32Employee Vice: Some Competing Models A Response to MobergBusiness Ethics Quarterly 8 (1): 147-164. 1998.Abstract:Much of the current discussion of evil within business and professions locates evil within the individual employee. Dennis Moberg (1997) has argued for conceiving of employee viciousness as a lack of self-control. This paper argues, that while some evil behaviors may be well-modelled as instances of low self-control, this model does not fit much of what might qualify as evil (e.g., child-caregivers falsely accusing their fellow employees of ritual child abuse). The paper examines three …Read more
Areas of Specialization
1 more
Philosophy of Action |
Aesthetics |
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Asian Philosophy |