•  17
    Despite interminable debate, ethical perspectives have sought to stem the abuse of corporate power by focusing on the split between utility-focused attention to shareholder value, including the ‘enlightened’ kind, and duty-focused imperatives in stakeholder theory. Through thought experiments, this chapter builds a case for a different approach. Ethics scholars including Brandt (1959) and Frankena (1963) highlight contrasting approaches to both utility and duty, separating formation of general r…Read more
  •  165
    Philosophically engaged fiction often employs ideas in ways that reflect the exploitation-exploration dilemma in developmental psychology: by exploiting well articulated theories by enacting their conflicts, or by exploring the uncertainties of puzzling ontologies or moral complexities. We can see this in action in many works, but some novels of ideas seek to defy such categorization, with lessons for readers and writers. This paper analyzes two recent works – The Overstory by Richard Powers (20…Read more
  •  158
    Enactment or Exploration: Two Roles for Philosophy in the Novel of Ideas
    Philosophy and Literature 47 (1): 108-127. 2023.
    Abstract:I examine the often-denigrated concept of the novel of ideas from its inception and critical decline to its relatively recent revival. Using a variant of the exploitation-exploration dilemma in psychology, I suggest that early usage referred to works that exploit philosophical principles—or better, enact them—by setting philosophical positions in conflict. By contrast, use of the concept for more recent works sees characters and plots exploring philosophical stances. The shift correspon…Read more
  •  58
    Despite decades of theorising and empirical research, the problems of corporate governance seem intractable, particularly the relationships between investors and companies. The thought experiment in this paper asks us to look at the problem through a fresh lens. It draws on the quaint British legal custom of calling shareholders “members”, and then uses the political philosopher Michael Walzer’s idea of membership in states, clubs, neighbourhoods, and families to draw lessons for the corporate w…Read more
  •  19
    Rules of the game: whose value is served when the board fires the owners?
    Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 21 (3): 298-309. 2012.
    How does a board of directors decide what is right? The contest over this question is frequently framed as a debate between shareholder value and stakeholder rights, between a utilitarian view of the ethics of corporate governance and a deontological one. This paper uses a case study with special circumstances that allows us to examine in an unusually clear way the conflict between shareholder value and other bases on which a board can act. In the autumn of 2010, the board of Liverpool Football …Read more
  •  29
    Rules of the game: whose value is served when the board fires the owners?
    Business Ethics: A European Review 21 (3): 298-309. 2012.
    How does a board of directors decide what is right? The contest over this question is frequently framed as a debate between shareholder value and stakeholder rights, between a utilitarian view of the ethics of corporate governance and a deontological one. This paper uses a case study with special circumstances that allow us to examine in an unusually clear way the conflict between shareholder value and other bases on which a board can act. In the autumn of 2010, the board of Liverpool Football C…Read more
  •  365
    Edging Toward ‘Reasonably’ Good Corporate Governance
    Philosophy of Management 17 (3): 353-371. 2018.
    Over four decades, research and policy have created layers of understandings in the quest for "good" corporate governance. The corporate excesses of the 1970s sparked a search for market mechanisms and disclosure to empower shareholders. The UK-focused problems of the 1990s prompted board-centric, structural approaches, while the fall of Enron and many other companies in the early 2000s heightened emphasis on director independence and professionalism. With the financial crisis of 2007–09, howev…Read more
  •  10
    Art in Corporate Governance: a Deweyan Perspective on Board Experience
    Philosophy of Management 20 (3): 337-353. 2020.
    Corporate governance sits at the intersection of many disciplines, among them law, business, management, finance, and accounting. The point of departure for large portions of this literature concerns the ugliness of greed, ambition, misdemeanors, and malfeasance of corporations, their directors, and those actors who hold shares in them. This essay takes a rather different starting point. Drawing upon insights from a distant field, it uses the discussion of aesthetics in Dewey’s treatise on art t…Read more
  •  4
    ReviewEssay: Disagreeing About the Climate
    Business and Society 49 (3): 548-557. 2010.
    This review article reflects on the current controversy concerning climate change. The article does so through a review of Hulme’s book Why We Disagree About Climate Change . The article also considers the implications of the Stern Report