What's going on? -- Integrity and trust -- Corporate dilemmas in the absence of integrity and trust -- Inspirational stories of integrity and trust -- Making good decisions about strategy, ethics, and leadership -- Building on good decisions with authenticity and sincerity -- Twelve ways to lead with the sincerity edge.

This book argues that ethical business behavior can be enhanced by taking fuller account of human nature, particularly with respect to the need for creating relatively small communities within the corporation. Timothy Fort discusses this premise in relation to the three predominant theories of business ethics--stakeholder, virtue, and contract. Drawing heavily from philosophy, he analyzes traditional business ethics and legal theory. Overall, his work provides a good example of how to integrate normative and empirical studies in business ethics, (...) a task that often receives substantial discussion in academic journals. (shrink)

This paper argues that business can be helpfully conceived of as a mediating institution. Drawing upon neo-conservative theology, the author argues that mediating institutions serve a vital function in a free society to provide social justice out of an expanded civil society and provide a framework for a flourishing free market. Such institutions also nourish the attitudinal orientation of solidarity in applying the principle of subsidiarity by which self-interest becomes fulfilled through concern for others.The author further argues that businesses also (...) be conceived of as mediating institutions and thereby be held to criteria of meeting associationalneeds. In addition to normative reasons for revising the social contract so that businesses do serve the role of mediating institutions, contemporary management theories demonstrate that businesses can also meet their social obligations of creating wealth while meeting associational needs. (shrink)

This paper is a response to a recent colloquy among Professors David Messick, Donna Wold, and Edwin Harman. I defend Messick’s naturalist methodology, which suggests that people inherently categorize others and act altruistically toward certain people in a given person’s in-group. This paper suggests that an anthropological reason for this grouping tendency is a limited human neural ability to process large numbers of relationships. But because human beings also have the ability to modify, to some extent, their nature, corporate law (...) can organize small mediating institutions within large corporations in order to take ethical advantage of this groupingtendency. Within a corporate law taking seriously a mediating institution’s formulation of business communities, a virtue ethicsapproach can be integrated with a naturalist approach in a way that fosters ethical business behavior while mitigating the dangers of ingrouping tendencies. (shrink)

Bill Frederick’s work calls on business ethicists to consider religion as well as nature. Because there are naturally wired religious impulses in human beings and because of the fairness of including normative approaches meaningful for business people, Frederick suggests that the “R” in CSR4 should represent religion. This article takes up the theme in terms of the emerging field of naturalist theology, particularly (although embryonically) as stated by theologian Paul Tillich. Doing so creates (a) connections between “God as Life” and (...) nature and (b) linkages of the notions of symbol, culture, and transcendence. In addition to avoiding the socalled “naturalistic fallacy,” this integration can foster ethical business behavior. (shrink)

Just as Michael Porter's five forces provided a practical analytical tool for describing the forces that shape competitive strategy, so business ethicists ought to provide business leaders with a workable framework for understanding the sources of ethical obligations. The forces that shape competitive strategy vary according to time and industry, but are anchored in an ultimate criteria of profitability. Similarily, ethics can use a set of analytical categories that identify the relevant forces to business ethics on the basis of relationality.This (...) paper first argues that relationality based on naturalism is the primary, plausible value for ethics. Second, it adapts a tripartite dialectic from scholars William Frederick and Michael Novak to describe the relational categories with which business must contend. Third, it uses these forces in a way similar to Porter's competitive forces to offer an analytical language familiar to managers in order to characterize business ethics. (shrink)

In this response to Paul Lawrence’s Ruffin Lecture, I assess the benefits of integrating biology into business ethics including the way in which biology counteracts conventional economic descriptions of human nature. Section II looks at the dangers of the project and offers the notion of Multilevel Selection Theory as a way to address the notion of how one balances various biological drives. Section III concludes by suggesting that in order to optimally integrate biology, one should attend to contractual notions (the (...) deal) as well as a Sisyphean quest to engage in the task of integration. In doing so, we should also remember to draw upon the dolphin in each of us, that part that takes pleasure in doing moral acts. (shrink)

In this response to Paul Lawrence’s Ruffin Lecture, I assess the benefits of integrating biology into business ethics including the way in which biology counteracts conventional economic descriptions of human nature. Section II looks at the dangers of the project and offers the notion of Multilevel Selection Theory as a way to address the notion of how one balances various biological drives. Section III concludes by suggesting that in order to optimally integrate biology, one should attend to contractual notions (the (...) deal) as well as a Sisyphean quest to engage in the task of integration. In doing so, we should also remember to draw upon the dolphin in each of us, that part that takes pleasure in doing moral acts. (shrink)

This article reviews Thomas Donaldson and Thomas Dunfee's new book Ties That Bind. The article argues that the book is a helpful elaboration of Donaldson and Dunfee's Integrative Social Contracts Approach, particularly with regard to their specification of hypernorms. The article also presents Donaldson and Dunfee's argument with regard to how the hypernorm of necessary social efficiency applies to bribery and raises questions about the extent to which human moral behavior might be hardwired.

The issue of whether religious belief should be an appropriate grounding for business ethics raises issues very similar to those raised in asking whether religious belief should be an appropriate grounding for political morality. In light of that fact that writings in political morality have been a common resource for contemporary business ethics, this paper presents contemporary arguments about the role of religion in political morality while noting the relevance of these debates for business ethics.The paper takes the position that (...) rather than excluding religion from public morality, political morality (and business ethics) ought to take an inclusive, ecumenical approach. To argue this position and to present fully a range of literature normally not studied in business ethics circles, the paper presents and critiques the major contemporary authors in the field of political morality and contrasts them with the inclusionists who seek to keep public grounds open for all moral perspectives. (shrink)

Our goals in this article are to summarize the existing literature on the role business can play in creating sustainable peace and to discuss important avenues for extending this research. As part of our discussion, we review the ethical arguments and related research made to date, including the rationale and motivation for businesses to engage in conflict resolution and peace building, and discuss how scholars are extending research in this area. We also focus on specific ways companies can actively engage (...) in conflict reduction including promoting economic development, the rule of law, and principles of external valuation, contributing to a sense of community, and engaging in track-two diplomacy and conflict sensitive practices. We conclude by developing a set of future research questions and considerations. (shrink)

Explores moral progress in the American military.

This book presents a novel interpretation of Hegel's early masterwork, The Phenomenology of Spirit, focusing on the related themes of recognition and the self. It will be important for students and scholars of Hegel and German idealism, and philosophers and others interested in recognition.

The ArgumentHistorians of science naturally tend to express interest in other forms of intellectual activity only when these intersect with science. This tendncy has produced a number of enlightening studies of what happens when science and (for instance) law or theology come into contact, but little by way of how science enters into the calculations and social status of such forms of knowledge after the conjuction has passed. Recent work in the sociology of professions, in contrast, has focused attention precisely (...) on those moments when the expert knowledge produced by different group doesnotoverlap. This has been the contribution of Andrew Abbortt's theory of “jurisdictional boundaries” between competing professions. The case of Victorian actuaries who worked hard to maintain unique intellectual claims in the competitive life insurance industry while maintainiing strong social connections and overlaps in knowledge with organized science, challenges the way both historians of science and sociologists of professions view contending knowledge claims. By observing what motivated actuaries to forge an alliance with men of science in the 1820s, then tracing their gradual recognition of a need to distance themselves from certain of the “scientific” values that had earlier informed their collective identity, it is possible to make sense of connections as well as disconnections between science and other forms of knowledge. A history of quantification from the actuaries' perspective, in other words, allows us to view science bothasandincontext. (shrink)

One of the central debates among British chemists during the 1830s concerned the use of symbols to represent elements and compounds. Chemists such as Edward Turner, who desired to use symbolic notation mainly for practical reasons, eventually succeeded in fending off metaphysical objections to their approach. These objections were voiced both by the philosopher William Whewell, who wished to subordinate the chemists' practical aims to the rigid standard of algebra, and by John Dalton, whose hidebound opposition to abbreviated notation symbolized (...) the suspicion with which older British chemists perceived continental innovations. It is argued that the success of chemists like Turner in this debate reflects their larger success in the 1830s in achieving disciplinary autonomy and in beginning to align themselves more closely with prevailing chemical practice across the Channel. (shrink)

Can moral judgements be true or false? Can rational methods be applied to ethics? In this landmark study, Sprigge gives an account of how philosophers have tackled these questions and puts forward his own theory on the matter.