A framework is designed to aid the marketing decision maker in choosing between deontological and utilitarian reasoning when attempting to solve ethical problems. the framework uses miller's theory of living systems to develop a hierarchy of exchanges as a basis for analysis. then the historical appeal of deontology and utilitarianism are analyzed with respect to the hierarchy.

This article focuses on the issue of finding and illustrating a common ground for discussions between those academics involved in the science of entrepreneurial behavior and those involved in the ethics of entrepreneurial behavior. Several articles appeared in the April 1994 Business Ethics Quarterly on the relationship between the science of business and business ethics. In one article by Weaver and Trevino (1994; 130–143), the authors proposed three possible relationships between the normative and empirical business ethics. The author of another (...) article in that issue, Tom Donaldson (1994; 157–169), endorsed only one of the three relationships (165) offered by Weaver and Trevino and argued against the others. The relationship endorsed by Donaldson was called “symbiosis.” In doing so he recognized that both normative and empirical insights are necessary to business ethics. This article follows the combinedreasoning of these authors by describing a symbiotic relationship between the empirical and normative requirements of trust building for entrepreneurs. (shrink)

This study reports on the development of scale items derived from the pluralistic moral philosophy literature. In addition, the manner in which individuals combine aspects of the different philosophies in making ethical evaluations was explored.

The conceptual model presented in this article argues that corporations exhibit specific behaviors that signal their true level of moral development. Accordingly, the authors identify five levels of moral development and discuss the dynamics that move corporations from one level to another. Examples of corporate behavior which are indicative of specific stages of moral development are offered.

This article uses Arndt's depiction of marketing epistemology to suggest a possible explanation for the lack of emphasis on marketing ethics within the marketing literature. While a growing number of writers are turning their attention to the area, marketing's heavy reliance on logical empiricism has contributed to a disinclination in the development of this area. Only through recent and numerous revelations of misconduct has the discipline of marketing responded to its ethical dimensions.

This comment is offered in response to Hansen's "A Multidimensional Scale for Measuring Business Ethics: A Purification and Refinement". Five issues arising from Hansen's purification and refinement efforts are addressed. These include the issues of parsimony, predictive validity, collinearity, reliability, and what we see as a confusion between normative and positive theory.

This comment is offered in response to Hansen's A Multidimensional Scale for Measuring Business Ethics: A Purification and Refinement. Five issues arising from Hansen's purification and refinement efforts are addressed. These include the issues of parsimony, predictive validity, collinearity, reliability, and what we see as a confusion between normative and positive theory.

This article discusses the major criticisms posed in On Measuring Ethical Judgments concerning our ethics scale development work. We agree that the authors of the criticism do engage in what they accurately refer to as armchair theorizing. We point out the errors in their comments.

This article uses Arndt's depiction of marketing epistemology to suggest a possible explanation for the lack of emphasis on marketing ethics within the marketing literature. While a growing number of writers are turning their attention to the area, marketing's heavy reliance on logical empiricism has contributed to a disinclination in the development of this area. Only through recent and numerous revelations of misconduct has the discipline of marketing responded to its ethical dimensions.

This research examines, in a general manner, the degree and character of perceptual congruity between salespeople and managers on ethical issues. Salespeople and managers from a diversity of organizations were presented with three scenarios having varying degrees of ethical content and were asked to evaluate the action of the individual in each scenario. Findings indicate that, in every instance, the participating managers tended (1) to be more critical of the action displayed in the scenarios, (2) to view the action as (...) violating a sense of contract or promise, and (3) to view the action as less culturally acceptable than did the salespeople. (shrink)

In this study, we examined moral issues and gender differences in ethical judgment using Reidenbach and Robin’s [Journal of Business Ethics9 (1990) 639) multidimensional ethics scale (MES). A total of 340 undergraduate students were asked to provide ethical judgment by rating three moral issues in the MES labeled: ‚sales’, ‚auto’, and ‚retail’ using three ethics theories: moral equity, relativism, and contractualism. We found that female students’ ratings of ethical judgment were consistently higher than that of male students across two (...) out of three moral issues examined (i.e., sales and retails) and ethics theories; providing support for Eagly’s [1987, Sex Differences in Social Behavior: A Social-role Interpretation. (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, Hillsdale, NJ, England)] social role theory. After controlling for moral issues, women’s higher ratings of ethical judgment over men’s became statistically non-significant. Theoretical and practical implications based on the study’s findings are provided. (shrink)

Composite materialism, as I will understand it, is the view that human persons are composite material objects. This paper develops and investigates an argument, The Vague Singulars Argument, for the falsity of composite materialism. We shall see that cogent or not, the Vague Singulars Argument has philosophically significant ramifications.

In der neuen Literatur tiber Leibniz' Spatphilosophie findet man zwei deutlich einander entgegengesetzte Theorien Uber die Realitat des Körpers. Auf der einen Seite gibt es Gesichtspunkte, die ihn mit einer Phänomenalismuslehre verbinden, nach welcher die Körper nichts anderes als koordinierte Perzeptionen unausgedehnter Monaden sind. Auf der anderen Seite gibt es Griinde, die dafur sprechen, daß Leibniz die Auffassung vertreten muß, daß Körper Aggregate von Monaden sind. In diesem Aufsatz suche ich zu zeigen, daß die phanomenalistische Interpretation aufgrund der starken Textzeugnisse, (...) die Leibniz beständig zur Aggregatthese hindrängen, zuriickzuweisen ist. Daruber hinaus weise ich jedoch die verbreitete Auffassung eben der Aggregatthese zurück, d. h. die Meinung, gewisse Vielheiten von Monaden riefen bloß die Illusion, Körper zu sein, hervor, wenn sie durch andere Monaden M falsch perzipiert" werden. Gegen diese Auffassung des falschen Perzipierens ftihre ich ins Feld, daß die Aggregatthese als ein Deutungsversuch der Natur oder des Wesens des Körpers verstanden werden mufi. Wenn Leibniz sagt, Körper seien Aggregate von Monaden, so ist das nicht als blofie Behauptung, gewisse Monaden erschienen anderen Monaden als Körper, zu verstehen, sondern als die These, daß jeder Körper seinem Wesen nach eine Vielheit von Monadenist. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s well known and thoroughly discussed criticism of the cosmological argument, hereafter ‘CA’, is that it presupposes or depends upon the cogency of the ontological argument, hereafter ‘OA’. Call this criticism ‘the Dependency Thesis’. It is fair to say that the received view on the matter is that Kant failed to establish the Dependency Thesis.1 In what follows, I argue that the received view is mistaken. I begin by rehearsing the standard objection to what is typically taken to be (...) Kant’s primary argument for the Dependency Thesis. I defend Kant by presenting a different argument for his thesis. This argument is not vulnerable to the standard objection, and there is good reason to think that Kant had such an argument in mind. (shrink)

The quest for molecular mechanisms that guide axons or specify synaptic contacts has largely focused on molecules that intuitively relate to the idea of an “instruction.” By contrast, “permissive” factors are traditionally considered background machinery without contribution to the information content of a molecularly executed instruction. In this essay, I recast this dichotomy as a continuum from permissive to instructive actions of single factors that provide relative contributions to a necessarily collaborative effort. Individual molecules or other factors do not constitute (...) absolute instructions by themselves; they provide necessary context for each other, thereby creating a composite that defines the overall instruction. The idea of composite instructions leads to two main conclusions: first, a composite of many seemingly permissive factors can define a specific instruction even in the absence of a single dominant contributor; second, individual factors are not necessarily related intuitively to the overall instruction or phenotypic outcome. (shrink)

More than three decades after its advent in political science, rational choice theory has yet to add appreciably to the stock of knowledge about politics. In Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory we traced this failure to methodological defects rooted in the aspiration to come up with universal theories of politics. After responding to criticisms of our argument, we elaborate on our earlier recommendations about how to improve the quality of rational choice applications. Building on suggestions of contributors to this volume, (...) we lay out an empirically based research program designed to delineate the conditions under which rational choice explanations are likely to be useful. (shrink)

Putnam says that "In one way of conceiving it, realism is an empirical theory." In the present work it is maintained that, in another way of conceiving it, realism is a grammatical thesis. That is, many of the principles taken to be definitive of realism, e.g., "Truth is objective," "Truth is mind-independent," Dummett's "a thought can be true only if there is something in virtue of which it is true," are what Wittgenstein would have called "grammatical remarks." They simply call (...) attention to certain features of the grammar of truth and related concepts. Thus, e.g., it is a feature of the way we use "is true" that statements are not spoken of as true for one person and not true for another. ;The character of grammar and of grammatical remarks in general is spelled out in some detail; it is argued in particular that Wittgenstein is not intending to provide, by means of these notions, a particular account of necessary truth. He is suggesting, rather, that looking upon certain philosophical claims as grammatical is a way of "deflating" them, stripping them of their appearance of profundity. Neither can grammatical remarks imply substantive philosophical theses. This is why realism, conceived as comprising grammatical remarks, does not imply scepticism, as is often supposed, and is not itself a controversial or exciting doctrine. ;There are of course some controversial formulations of realism, versions which are not simply underwritten by grammar. Thus some philosophers have held that, because the truth conditions of a proposition are essentially independent of any evidence we may have for the proposition, truth may not be accessible at all. I believe, however, that Putnam has shown, by means of an argument which is instructively viewed as a grammatical investigation, that truth is accessible, at least to an "ideal" theory. ;Recent expressions of idealism are argued to provide helpful accounts of language use and understanding, but fail to establish that truth is nothing but warranted assertibility, or that it must in some sense "arise within us." Such a conclusion runs afoul of the grammar of truth, of which realism is shown to provide the proper account. (shrink)

'Leading economists presenting fundamentally important issues in economic theory' is the theme of the Nancy Schwartz lectures series held annually at the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University. Reporting on lectures delivered in the years 1983 through 1997, this collection of essays discusses economic behavior at the individual and group level and the implications to the performance of economic systems. Using non-technical language, the speakers present theoretical, experimental, and empirical analysis of decision making under uncertainty and (...) under full and bounded rationality, the influence of economic incentives and habits, and the effects of learning and evolution on dynamic choice. Perfect competition, economic development, social insurance and social mobility, and negotiation and economic survival, are major economic subjects analyzed through our understanding of economic behavior. (shrink)

This article critiques the inadequate attention given to the question of meaning in mainstream clinical psychiatry and psychology. The author reviews the history of phenomenological and existential psychiatry, especially the work of Erwin Straus, and highlights the emphasis on the personal world of experience and on such existential dimensions as time and ethical experience. Aaron Beck's school of cognitive therapy appropriates many themes and concepts from phenomenology, including the central concept of meaning, and turns them into a systematic technology for (...) personal change. The author contrasts the phenomenological and cognitive approaches to meaning. The relationship between the cognitive and existential therapies is described by analogy to William James's healthy-minded and morbid-minded religion. (shrink)