Daryl Koehn

. 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 integrity needs to be better defined because the current mode of talking about the subject is misleading. The paper considers three traditions’ understanding of the idea of integrity, argues that integrity is intrinsically valuable, and concludes with some reflections on the way in which integrity, properly understood, functions as a business asset.

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.

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 understanding of business practice.

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 their common stock to two public charities and if the organization is ever sold, all the proceeds would go to charitable organizations in their community.

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.

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 scandals—contaminated milk and beef mislabeling—that had almost brought down the venerable company. Hiwasa was ambivalent about taking on this Herculean task. Was the company sincere in wanting to reform and revitalize? Would the board take her seriously? Was her presence to be mere publicity-driven window dressing? How would fellow consumer advocates view her if she accepted the position? This case details the history of Snow Brand Milk Products and the missteps and scandals that plagued it in the 1990s and early part of the decade that followed, and includes Hiwasa’s decision-making process as she considers whether to join the board of a company that has been badly tainted by scandal.

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 alternative models of evil, two drawn from literature, one from theology, and shows why these alternative models are just as relevant for thinking about the nature and cause of evil as the low self-control model drawn from the criminology literature.How intoxicating to feel like God the Father and to hand out definitive testimonials of bad character and habits—Albert Camus.

As use of the Internet has increased, many issues of trust have arisen. Users wonder: will may privacy be protected if I provide information to this Internet vendor? Will my credit card remain secure? Should I trust that this party will deliver the goods? Will the goods be as described? These questions are not merely academic. A recent Boston Consulting Group study revealed that one out of ten consumers have ordered and paid for items online that never were delivered (Williams, 2001). This year consumers filed around 11 000 complaints with the Federal Trade Commission alleging auction fraud, a figure up from the 107 lodged in 1997. It is no wonder that people are increasingly worried about whom to trust in online interactions. This paper explores the conditions under which online trust thrives and looks at examples of best and worst corporate practices. Online trust issues arise in a wide array of forums - chat rooms, news postings, e-catalogues, and retail transactions, to name a few. This paper focuses primarily on the online retail market, but the analysis applies to informational and entertainment sites as well.

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.

A number of advocates for TQM contend that firms who embrace TQM will automatically and naturally act in ethically sound ways (Roth, 1993; Pace, 1999; Steeples, 1994). This claim is a strong one. This paper assesses its truth. We consider the many ways in which quality initiatives, if undertaken in good faith, can foster sound ethics. We explore the various ways in which TQM presupposes, and thus cannot engender, ethical behavior. And, finally, we identify some of the ethical blind spots in quality initiatives and TQM. We propose that if TQM is undertaken by thoughtful people who take steps to correct its ethical blind spots and who understand the need for an ethical underpinning, then TQM and ethics will prove mutually reinforcing.

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.

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.