Daryl Koehn

Claus Dierksmeier admirably combats the misperception that Kant is a deontologist with no regard for virtue. Dierksmeier contends Kant offers a theory of virtue that can contribute in significant ways to advancing the analysis of, e.g., stakeholder theory and internal compliance programs. His plea that business ethicists should view Kant as a resource for thinking more widely and deeply about virtue seems eminently sensible. However, there are grounds for questioning whether a Kantian approach will be of much help in thinking through the ethics of real world business practices.

Social enterprises may take a variety of legal forms (limited liability companies, nonprofit entities, etc.). This paper focuses primarily upon one particular new form increasingly popular within the United States—the “Benefit Corporation.” I evaluate whether US Benefit Corporations are likely to realize as much social benefit as is frequently claimed. Part One of the paper describes the features of Benefit Corporations as they are constituted in many states. Part Two lays out the benefits extolled by supporters of this US legal corporate form. Part Three challenges these claims and adduces some reasons for doubting whether Benefit Corporations will prove to be as socially useful as they claim to be. Part Four concludes with some suggestions for future lines of research into the nature of the firm and Benefit Corporations in particular.

Scholars are increasingly interested in possible relationships between aesthetics and ethics and in the pedagogical value of art. This paper considers some specific works of art and explores their multi-faceted relation to ethics and morality. I argue that art has both positive and negative relationships to ethics and morality (which I distinguish in a very rough way as the paper progresses). Art works of various sorts may productively be used in the business ethics classroom,but instructors need to keep in mind the multivalent relationship between art, on the one hand, and ethics and morality on the other.

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 on the various types of fraud andtheir psychic effects as portrayed by Dante in his book Inferno.

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, Minneapolis, by Daryl Koehn and the Veritas Institute. His remarks cover the genesis of his interest in socially responsible business and the start of his company. Hannigan also discusses the arc of what he refers to as the “fourth sector”—the emergence of the social enterprise sector. He evaluates where benefit corporations began and shares his reflections on how they may develop in the future. Hannigan’s talk concludes with a short question and answer session with audience members at the event.

A number of business writers have argued that business is a game and, like a game, possesses its own special rules for acting. While we do not normally tolerate deceit, bluffing is not merely acceptable but also expected within the game of poker. Similarly, lies of omission, overstatements, puffery and bluffs are morally acceptable within business because it, like a game, has a special ethic which permits these normally immoral practices. Although critics of this reasoning have used deontological and utilitarian arguments to show that deceit in business is just an immoral as it is in any other realm of human practice, little attention has been paid to the fact that the argument is one of analogy. The analogical argument for business' special ethic is only as strong as the alleged similarities between business and game-playing. This paper argues that this analogy is quite weak and incapable of either providing much insight into business or of offering a reason to think that the ethics of business are, or even could be, like those of a game.

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 , and The Turn of the Screw to illustrate the origins of evil and suffering. The Nature of Evil offers an insightful and engaging exploration at a time when we are all struggling to understand the roots of violence and suffering.

“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 from responsibility, right from obligation, and duty from power, particularly within China? The first part of the paper investigates the understanding of responsibility and concepts of duty, obligation, right, and power in the Chinese context. The second part analyzes the key issues of responsibility associated with the expansion of rights and powers in today’s China. The concluding part explores agents’ responsibilities on different levels and offers suggestions on how to cultivate responsibility as part of a systematic moral education

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 share a natural basis and structure. This article sketches the rudiments of what a universal virtue ethic might look like. Such an ethic is especially relevant and valuable in this era of global business

Confucius’s teachings fall under four headings: “culture, moral conduct, doing one’s best, and being trustworthy in what one says” (7/25).1 Trust or, more precisely, being trustworthy, plays a central role in the Confucian ethic. This paper begins by examining the Confucian concept of trustworthiness. The second part of the paper discusses how the ideal of trustworthiness makes itself felt inbusiness practices within China. The paper concludes by raising and addressing several objections to the Confucian emphasis ontrustworthiness.

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 ethic is not well-suited for analyzing some problematic forms of behavior. Part One offers a brief overview of the firm and of the good life from a virtue ethics perspective. Part Two develops a number of criticisms of this perspective.

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 correct. The Thomistic just price is the price that would be agreed to by a just person as part of an exchange. This “just person price” takes into account the well-being of the individual transactors and the good of the entire community. Such a price reduces neither to the cost-covering price nor to the market exchange price. A Thomistic concept of the just person price deserves to be reconsidered, especially because a Thomistic approach offers some useful ways to deal with issues quite differently from the popular neoclassical approach directed toward arriving at a socially optimal market price.

Rethinking Feminist Ethics bridges the gap between women theorists disenchanted with aspects of traditional theories that insist upon the need for some ethical principles. The book raises the question of whether the female conception of ethics based on care, trust and empathy can provide a realistic alternative to the male ethics based on duty and rule bound conception of ethics developed from Kant, Mill and Rawls. Koehn concludes that it cannot, showing how problems for respect of the individual arise also in female ethics because it privileges the caregiver over the cared for. Drawing on Socrates' Crito , she shows how an ethic of dialogue can instill a critical respect for the view of the other and the ethical principles absent from the female ethic.