D. Fischer

This review article provides a new perspective on the ethics of green nudging. We advance a new model for assessing the ethical permissibility of green nudges (GNs). On this model, which provides normative guidance for policymakers, a GN is ethically permissible when the intervention is (1) efficacious, (2) cost-effective, and (3) the advantages of the GN (i.e. reducing the environmental harm) are not outweighed by countervailing costs/harms (i.e. for nudgees). While traditional ethical objections to nudges (paternalism, etc.) remain potential normative costs associated with GNs, any such costs must be weighed against the injunction to reduce environmental harm to third parties.

The challenge of the covid-19 pandemic brought to consciousness the severe ethical problem of apportionment of limited resources in medicine. In pre-covid times, this challenge was more the concern of a minority of key specialists, rather than an issue that troubled the majority of medical ethicists. While military medicine was quite familiar with the phenomenon, allocational problems resulting from a limited number of personnel or material resource troubled civil medical care only in exceptional cases (e.g., disaster medicine, transplant medicine). By now, the allocation of scarce medical resource has become a widespread major concern. The tragic choices linked to allocational strategies (e.g., triage) has to be ethically justified. Based on general terminological considerations, the relevance of biomedical ethical principles (autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, justice) will be discussed. Though the latter do not seem to matter at first sight in this context, they deeply affect both physicians’ and patients’ self-understanding as well as the resulting physician-patient relationship. Therefore, allocational ethics should be an integral part of military as well as civil teaching programs in medicine.

This article embarks on ethical trade-offs at the sustainability/finance interface by contrasting shareholders’ interest in short-term financial returns with society’s interest in counteracting ecological and social grievances. Scrutinizing share repurchases, we investigate a firm’s communicated sustainability orientation (i.e., its environmental and social value orientation) as well as its environmental and social sustainability performance. Our results are based on a large-scale panel dataset of 491 U.S. firms observed from 2004 to 2016. The dataset combines share buyback data with sustainability orientation scores from shareholder letters and sustainability performance ratings. The econometric models suggest no association between social value orientation and repurchase volumes, but a significantly negative relationship between environmental value orientation and buybacks in a cubic form. Executive stock options partially attenuate this relationship. Share repurchases in turn negatively affect future environmental and social performance. This study grasps the consequences of firms’ short-term shareholder satisfaction and discusses its ethical implications in the context of firms’ contribution to sustainable development, thereby providing important insights to the business ethics discourse.

Previous research on sustainable entrepreneurship has mainly aimed to understand the antecedents of entrepreneurs’ sustainability-oriented behavior. Yet the literature lacks a more nuanced understanding of how entrepreneurs implement sustainability strategies when creating a new venture. Drawing on sustainability concepts, we first examine how entrepreneurs balance the economic, environmental, and social dimensions as part of their ventures’ strategic ambitions. We show that sustainable entrepreneurs prioritize the three sustainability dimensions and possibly reprioritize them in response to stakeholder interests. Applying a stakeholder theory perspective, we theorize that how entrepreneurs balance their sustainability dimensions and goals depends on the degree of stakeholder involvement and of external expectations. Our contributions refine the growing sustainable entrepreneurship literature and call attention to the importance of including weightings and time when examining the dimensions of sustainability.

The ethical behavior prevalent in an organization often determines business success or failure. Much research in the business context has scrutinized ethical behavior, but there are still few insights into its roots; this study furthers this line of inquiry. In line with identity work theory, we examine how employees’ identification with a family business shapes internal ethical decision-making processes. Because it is individuals who engage in decision-making—be it ethical or not—our research perspective centers on the individual level. We followed an inductive, qualitative approach and conducted interviews with 19 employees in seven family businesses. We found that individuals engage in identity work when they identify as individual family firm employees and when they identify with the perceived characteristics of the family firm. These processes of identification, in turn, influence how employees cope with ethical situations. Our findings contribute to ethics and family business research, as well as to identity theory.

In the biblical Book of Ruth, Boaz instructs his workers not to molest Ruth. We draw insights on the problem of workplace sexual harassment in the family-firm setting from the Book of Ruth. We then integrate these insights with several discrete findings in the literatures on workplace sexual harassment and family firms: First, family firms are relatively strong when it comes to a culture of fairness and respect. Second, family firms sometimes lack formal codes of ethics, which could hamper integrity. Third, religious exemplars can reinforce the positive culture of family firms and even substitute for a formal code of ethics. Fourth, religious exemplars can also attenuate excessive risk-taking behavior in family firms.

Assurance of Learning (AoL) is a critical component of AACSB accreditation because students need to demonstrate skills acquired in the programs they enroll in. The purpose of this paper is to describe how a business school developed its ethics assessment program to fulfill the requirement of AoL when seeking AACSB accreditation. Three learning goals were identified based on the literature, assessment rubrics were created based on learning goals, and a Harvard Business Case was used as the assessment tool. The result of the first round of summative assessments showed that almost all students at least met the standard of these three learning goals. To close the loop, an ethics module and a one-hour video were added to a junior-level course. In the second round of summative assessment, we added a marginal level of competency to the rubric. We conclude with a plan for future student learning and assessment.

Abraham’s “leadership by example” provides a template for business leaders to implement a tone at the top based on a balance of tzedek (righteousness) and mishpat (legal judgement). The former expresses the generosity of spirit required of leaders, while the latter expresses the sound judgement in conformity with both ethics and enacted law. We relate the two constructs to several contemporary theories of justice and jurisprudence. We also relate the development of Abrahamic Justice in the Jewish tradition from antiquity through Maimonides in the middle ages. We draw insight from this tradition to answer a contemporary business ethics question: Do corporate managers violate their fiduciary duty to shareholders if they refuse to engage in legal tax avoidance?

In November 2014, Pope Francis addressed the World Congress of Accountants in Rome and called on the profession to go beyond accomplishing its duty with competence and wisdom. This study draws insights from Francis’s speech on how spirituality can expand the scope of accounting ethics from mere integrity, honesty, and professionalism to grander aims such as creativity, human development, and social solidarity. Recent studies show that workers and companies with a spiritual orientation perform better than peers and that spirituality fosters creativity. We also discuss how lessons from Francis’s speech can take place in a classroom setting and some real-world applications of those lessons.

Comment le chant est-il venu à l'homme? Depuis quand? Et qu'est-il devenu au cours des âges, au gré des continents et des cultures? Le chanteur nous impressionne - comment fait-il pour se faire entendre dans des salles de plus en plus grandes? - et surtout, il nous émeut - il est seul sur scène, son corps est son instrument. Il n'a rien derrière quoi se cacher, se protéger. Ainsi nous paraît-il à la fois fragile et puissant. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, chanteur éblouissant qui a marqué notre siècle, nous guide dans ce monde infiniment riche du chant. Interprétation, styles, physiologie, technique vocale, mise en scène, création... sont autant de domaines qu'il aborde avec toute la richesse et la profondeur qu'autorise sa large expérience. Il nous offre aussi le rare privilège de l'accompagner dans l'intimité de sa vie de chanteur, depuis le long travail solitaire de préparation d'une oeuvre, jusqu'aux multiples rencontres qui jalonnent son existence : partenaires, metteurs en scène, chefs d'orchestre, pianistes, mais aussi spectateurs et... critiques. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau S'interroge enfin sur l'avenir du chant : saura-t-il résister aux assauts conjoints de l'audiovisuel et de l'informatique? notre oreille, qui s'habitue au son de l'enregistrement, saura-t-elle continuer à apprécier celui du concert nos enfants et petits enfants continueront-ils de se presser à l'entrée des spectacles de musique vivante? sauront-ils que rien, jamais, ne saura remplacer l'émotion qui vous étreint au cours d'une représentation d'exception?