There are two primary purposes of this manuscript: (i) to evaluate the western buyers’ ethical issue in the setting of eastern and western economies, and (ii) to assess the ethical values of the employers and the government in their business dealing in the background of Bangladesh. Analyzing the present minimum wage (MW) policy of the garment global supply chain industry in Bangladesh and the extent to which the policy functions are two of the other purposes of this study. This (...) study is the mixed approached of exploratory, descriptive, and phenomenological qualitative research. Each of the exploratory, descriptive, and phenomenological qualitative research goals has identified and described in a systematic way to get the best outcome of the purposes set in this manuscript. This study shows that rule utilitarian ethics are being followed by the Western buyers in their business dealings in Western territories. The philosophy of rule utilitarianism holds moral principles, and this principle tends to place greater emphasis on ethical interests rather than economic gains. Unfortunately, Western buyers do not follow the rule utilitarianism in their business dealing in eastern countries. Thus, this study shows western business leaders/buyers are not ethically correct. The act utilitarian ethics, on the other hand, are being followed by the eastern buyers in their business dealing. The philosophy of act utilitarianism holds immoral principles, and this principle tends to place greater emphasis on economic gains rather than ethical interest. This philosophy permit firm’s unethical behavior such as an exploitation of MW on the ground that this practice increases its incomes and maximizes the owner’s interest. The employers and buyers unethically gain profit, keeping the workers in a disadvantaged situation, which contradicts John Rawls’ Theory of Justice. Furthermore, the government has become an accomplice in exploiting and depriving the garment works of their entitlement and labor rights to appease the so-called investors. This study helps buyers, employers, government, and stakeholders to correct their unethical business deals. It also helps the policymakers to implement the MW policy for the betterment of garment global supply chain workers. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The African business practice of kalabuleism, like capitalism, has at the basis of its business ethics, the belief that it is not wrong to maximise profits. Any system of distribution or marketing that permits businessmen and women to maximise profits in the sale or distribution of basic goods that are in short supply is bound to aggravate the situation for an already starving people such as are to be found in Africa. The adoption of wholesale capitalism in (...) conditions of acute shortage of basic (as well as non-basic) goods, is unconducive to the invention or practice of or belief in Akan-like or Christian-like ethics. Hence, central planning with respect to the necessities of life seems to me to be necessary in many parts of the Third World; and the African attempt to revolutionalize business ethics merely by means of coup d'etats, is likely to be counter-productive. (shrink)

The controversy over short selling has continued unabated from the introduction of modern equity trading in Amsterdam in 1610 to the present day. Nevertheless, the business ethics literature has not really addressed short selling. Short sellers not only profit from the misery of others, they also create it through their selling activities. However, they also provide a socially useful service by making prices better reflect true values, protecting other investors from purchasing overpriced securities. Short sellers can also help to (...) provide liquidity in the markets. Recently, there has been a hue and cry against so called "naked" short selling, which involves not delivering the shares that have been sold. This gives manipulators a tool for depressing stock prices and deprives purchasers of voting rights and potential stock lending revenue. Naked short selling creates ethical issues for short sellers, buyers, brokers, market makers, and regulators. Is it ethical to exploit a legal loophole that permits sellers to sell stock and delay delivering shares indefinitely? (shrink)

Mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRTs) have made headlines as some countries have passed legislation permitting the creation of “three-parent embryos” and because of the recent revelation that a child has already been born following the use of these techniques. MRTs assist women with severe mitochondrial disease to have children who are free from mitochondrial disease. Essentially, the mitochondrial DNA of an ovum or embryo is removed and replaced with the mtDNA of a donor. The purpose of this paper is to argue (...) that MRTs are ethically impermissible but greater regulation is needed. There are five parts to this paper: (1) a brief history of mitochondrial manipulation, (2) a description of the MRT process, (3) ethical arguments in opposition to MRTs, (4) relevant counterarguments, and (5) a proposal for increased regulation. (shrink)

In the economic literature on the firm, especially in the transaction-cost tradition, a sharp distinction is drawn between so-called “market transactions” and “administered transactions.” This distinction is of enormous importance for business ethics, since market transactions are governed by the competitive logic of the market, whereas administered transactions are subject to the cooperative norms that govern collective action in a bureaucracy. The widespread failure to distinguish between these two types of transactions, and thus to distinguish between adversarial and non-adversarial (...) relations, has led many business ethicists to develop a “uniform” moral code. Yet in market transactions, the checks and balances built into the system of commercial exchange are such as to permit more instrumental forms of behavior. In administered transactions, by contrast, these checks and balances are absent, and thus the institutional context calls for much greater exercise of moral restraint. In this paper, I begin the task of developing an adversarial ethic for business. According to this view, the competitive environment licenses a greater range of “self-interested” behavior, but also imposes its own constraints on the strategies that firms may adopt in the pursuit of their interests. (shrink)

In the economic literature on the firm, especially in the transaction–cost tradition, a sharp distinction is drawn between so-called “market transactions” and “administered transactions.” This distinction is of enormous importance for business ethics, since market transactions are governed by the competitive logic of the market, whereas administered transactions are subject to the cooperative norms that govern collective action in a bureaucracy. The widespread failure to distinguish between these two types of transactions, and thus to distinguish between adversarial and non-adversarial (...) relations, has led many business ethicists to develop a “uniform” moral code. Yet in market transactions, the checks and balances built into the system of commercial exchange are such as to permit more instrumental forms of behavior. In administered transactions, by contrast, these checks and balances are absent, and thus the institutional context calls for much greater exercise of moral restraint. In this paper, I begin the task of developing an adversarial ethic for business. According to this view, the competitive environment licenses a greater range of “self-interested” behavior, but also imposes its own constraints on the strategies that firms may adopt in the pursuit of their interests. (shrink)

Internal due process systems are the formal mechanisms thatmany organizations use to address and resolve ethics conflicts.Problematical due process systems such asinvestigation-punishment and grievance-arbitration systemsnarrowly constrain the political and moral space needed formeaningful ethics voice, praxis, and community. The relativelyuncommon employee board and mediator-counselor types of systemscan help solve such problems. The employee board andmediator-counselor systems permit questioning not only of guiltwith respect to policy violations but also the appropriateness ofthe policies as well as potential biases in an organization'sembedded tradition-system (...) that may be contributing to unethicalbehavior. Theoretical implications for organization ethics,praxis, community, and integrative social contracts theories areexplored. Several case examples are discussed. (shrink)

What do we do when a loved one is seriously messing up her life? While Kantianism describes the predicament nicely as a tension between love and respect, it is not well-suited to resolving it. Kantian respect prevents minding another’s business in cases where love demands it. Virtue ethics can readily explain the predicament as a tension between the virtues of sympathy and humility. Moreover, by changing the focus away from the other as a setter of ends and toward the (...) would-be-benefactor’s own degree of practical wisdom, virtue ethics permits a more nuanced set of loving responses to self-destructive people. (shrink)

The logic of gift and gratuitousness in business activity raised by the encyclical Caritas in Veritate stresses a deeper critical evaluation of the category of relation. The logic of gift in business includes two aspects. The first is considering the logic of gift as a new conceptual lens in order to view business relationship beyond contractual logic. In this view, it is crucial to see the circulation of goods as instrumental for the development of relationships. The second (...) aspect is to qualify the relationships established through the gift, and to think about the motivation in gift-giving, which has an ethical content. We give because we have received, and through gift-giving we develop relationships that have a high ‘bonding value’. Analysing the logic of gift in business management may permit us to gain an understanding of the ambiguity of gift-giving in organizations. Looking at the relationships between organizations and employees, and organizations and customers, we can discover why the logic of gift is often misunderstood or abused in its application, and how it should be applied to be more consistent with the message of Caritas in Veritate. (shrink)

English Philosophy owes much that is most characteristic of it to the assiduous toil of men whose vocation has not been that of academic teaching and research. Many of them have been engulfed in the routine of business life, and such hours as they could devote to philosophic reflexion have been snatched from intervals of leisure which the majority of business men relinquish to recreation and rest. The friend to whose memory I wish to pay my humble tribute (...) would not have claimed for himself, nor have permitted his associates to claim for him, the distinction of having initiated a new line of speculative reflexion. But, if he did not propound any original metaphysical theory, he possessed, in quite unusual measure, the. (shrink)

Richard Pettigrew has recently advanced a justification of the Principle of Indifference on the basis of a principle that he calls “cognitive conservatism,” or “extreme epistemic conservatism.” However, the credences based on the Principle of Indifference, as Pettigrew formulates it, violate another desideratum, namely, that learning from experience be possible. If it is accepted that learning from experience should be possible, this provides grounds for rejecting cognitive conservatism. Another set of criteria considered by Pettigrew, which involves a weighted mean of (...) worst-case and best-case accuracy, affords some learning, but not the sort that one would expect. This raises the question of whether accuracy-based considerations can be adapted to justify credence functions that permit induction. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the claim that businesspersons have what might be called "ethical immunity" with respect to the duty not to deceive. According to this ethical immunity claim, businesspersons are exempt from the ordinary ethical prohibition against deception; and widespread business deception is therefore ethically permissible. I focus on two arguments for the claim. One of the arguments, which has been presented by Albert Carr, relies upon an analogy between business on the one hand, and games (...) in which deception is permitted, on the other. The second argument is based upon the notion that exceptions to ethical duties may sometimes be justified on prudential grounds. In response to the arguments, I try to show that neither one provides strong support for the ethical immunity claim. (shrink)

Richard Pettigrew has recently advanced a justification of the Principle of Indifference on the basis of a principle that he calls “cognitive conservatism,” or “extreme epistemic conservatism.” However, the credences based on the Principle of Indifference, as Pettigrew formulates it, violate another desideratum, namely, that learning from experience be possible. If it is accepted that learning from experience should be possible, this provides grounds for rejecting cognitive conservatism. Another set of criteria considered by Pettigrew, which involves a weighted mean of (...) worst-case and best-case accuracy, affords some learning, but not the sort that one would expect. This raises the question of whether accuracy-based considerations can be adapted to justify credence functions that permit induction. (shrink)

This study belongs to a relatively new historical subgenre, best described by its French name, histoire du livre, which seeks to understand the book as a force in history. A rich field for research, it permits its practitioners to move, by way of economics, sociology, and politics, from the narrow confines of bibliography to the larger vistas of cultural and intellectual history. The more significant the book, the greater the possibilities for shedding light on the larger questions of an (...) era through a study of its composition, production, and diffusion. And when the book happens to be the chief instrument in the dissemination of Enlightenment, it is the whole world of ideas of the last decades of the eighteenth century that is opened up by the scholar tracing its complex life cycle. (shrink)

What justifies practices of “standing”? Numerous everyday practices exhibit the normativity of standing: forbidding certain interventions and permitting ignoring them. The normativity of standing is grounded in facts about the person intervening and not on the validity of her intervention. When valid, directives are reasons to do as directed. When interventions take the form of directives, standing practices may permit excluding those directives from one’s practical deliberations, regardless of their validity or normative weight. Standing practices are, therefore, puzzling – forbidding (...) giving reasons and, if given, permitting disregarding such reasons. What justifies standing practices are the values that they protect, including privacy, autonomy, independence, valuable relationships, and equal respect. These values count in favor of standing’s duty against certain interventions and, when these duties of non-intervention are breached, the values underpinning those duties count in favor of standing’s permission to discount or exclude those interventions from one’s practical deliberations – the normative weight of those interventions notwithstanding. (shrink)

The ethics research community has all but ignored issues of oversight ethics – the vices and virtues of overseers. This study develops a conceptual framework for exploring the ethics of oversight and provides insights into the design of codes of ethics for oversight institutions and for overseers. Analysis of business licensing in Israel reveals prospective and retrospective oversight ethics problems at the levels of national and local policy and implementation: Overseers failed to act on knowledge of breaches of (...) class='Hi'>business licensing stipulations and took action known to be slow and ineffective; policymakers neglected their duty to enact significant policy change in an oversight system that was clearly not working. Partially as a result of these oversight failures, over one third of Israeli businesses are unlicensed, 23 people were killed in the collapse of an unlicensed banquet hall, 2 major fires erupted in the same shopping mall, and a fire in a fertilizer warehouse very nearly became a mega-disaster. (shrink)

Skeptical theism has as its foundation the thesis that if God permits evil, his reasons for doing so will likely be beyond our ken. The only defense given for this thesis is the Parent Analogy. There is in the literature only one defense of this use of the Parent Analogy and it has never been confronted. I examine it and expose serious flaws, thus exposing a crack in the very foundation of skeptical theism.

. All personal that belong to a company, has to be consider into their daily agenda theoptimization of the inventory, in matter of create a cost reduction into the organization, an finallyincrement the productivity.The inventory is the element that gives “live” to the companies, in the moment to be manufacturedinto a product, through the works stations, is the case, that the excess of inventory will force thecompany not invert into development, research, training, technology, etc., and this situation willaffect competiveness, and (...) take the risk of be out of the market.The clients pay for a good, with a competitiveness price, excellent quality, and complete all thespecification that they request, plus has to be deliver on time; our responsibility is do wherever ittakes to guaranty the mayor percentage of efficiency in all our process and complete the goal ofsatisfy our clients.Keywords. Competitiveness, cost, inventory management, productivity.Resumen. Todo el personal estratégico, administrativo y operativo perteneciente a una empresa,debe considerar dentro de su agenda diaria la optimización de la gestión de los inventarios,permitiendo con ello un impacto en la reducción los costos de la organización, que se traducirá en unincremento de la productividad.El inventario es el elemento que permite dar vida a las empresas, al momento de ser transformada enun producto, a través de todas las estaciones de trabajo dando paso a paso un valor agregado, sinembargo el exceso de los inventarios ocasiona que la organización no pueda en incurrir en gastos quepermitan el desarrollo y crecimiento, como son las áreas de investigación y desarrollo, capacitación yadiestramiento, tecnología, mercadotecnia, etc., trayendo en consecuencia perder el nivel decompetitividad, y con ello correr el riesgo de quedar desplazado por la competencia.Los clientes pagan por producto que presente un precio competitivo; de la más alta calidad; quecumpla con todas y cada una de sus especificaciones; que sea entregado en tiempo y forma; esnuestra responsabilidad como estrategas, administradores y operadores de los inventarios, elgarantizar el mayor porcentaje de eficiencia en los procesos productivos y administrativos, demanera de lograr el fin último de toda empresa tiene, satisfacer a sus clientes.Palabras claves. Administración de inventarios, competitividad, costos, productividad. (shrink)

This article explores verbal and visual language use in Zimbabwean contraceptive promotional brochures distributed from the early to mid-1980s. Drawing on recent work in critical discourse analysis of text and visual design, the article uses multimodal discourse analysis and draws from Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar’s transitivity analysis to analyze family planning pamphlets, focusing on the discursive construction of women as contraceptive users. The article argues that the salience of the language of risk and vulnerability, which is textually and visually deployed (...) throughout the pamphlets, discursively constructs risk as a feature of unequal power relations. The article further argues that underlying the overarching discourse on risk are multiple ‘silences’ that discursively construct an ideological difference consisting of oppositional binaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in terms of power relations. The differentiation of social groups reflects ‘hidden’ social inequalities in the text and visual images. (shrink)

Abstract:AbstractDrawing from qualitative data in a Southern African context, this article explores meanings assigned to names for female genitalia to establish whether males and females assign the same meanings to the same vocabulary used in naming or whether they associate the same vocabulary with different meanings. The study illustrates that while males associate the meanings of terms for female genitalia with well-established, stigmatized views of women, female informants associate the same terms with different meanings that provide alternative views about women (...) and, at the same time, appear to be a form of reclamation of Southern African women’s personhood, identity, and agency. Although males, through these vocabulary items, metaphorically associate female genitalia with possession, which discursively constructs women as powerless objects that can be owned and commoditized, females draw from the philosophy of Africana womanism, indicating that even in asymmetrically structured societies, some women subjectively and purposefully construct their own identities as strong, smart, socially conscious, and independent. (shrink)

Recruiting nurses from other countries is a long-standing practice. In recent years many countries in the developed world have more frequently recruited nurses from the developing world, causing an imbalance in the health services in often already impoverished countries. Despite guidelines and promises by developed countries that the practice should cease, it has largely failed to do so. A consortium of authors from countries that have experienced significant nurse poaching consider the ethical aspects behind this continuing practice.

Smartphones with Global Positioning System (GPS) apps offer simple and accurate tools to collect data on human mobility. However, their associated ethical challenges remain to be assessed. We used the Emanuel framework to assess the ethical concerns of using smartphone GPS to record mobility patterns of young adults in rural South Africa for a larger study on mobility and HIV risk (Sesikhona). We conducted four focus groups (FGDs) with individuals eligible for the Sesikhona study. FGD data were coded using the (...) Emanuel framework. Participants perceived use of smartphone GPS to study human mobility and HIV risk as valuable. They raised concerns about invasion of privacy and confidentiality. Also mentioned were risk/benefit ratio, informed consent and ongoing respect. Concerns expressed provided a useful evidence-base for the development of a guide to inform future participants about ethical issues arising in the use of GPS technology to track mobility and health-related issues. (shrink)

The new business opportunities and prospects emerging in Europe within the Common Market and other Western and European countries also raise important ethical challenges. This work comprises a collection of ethical insights to enhance the conduct of business in an evolving Europe.

There is an urgent need to understand how private and public organisations can play a role in promoting human values such as fairness, dignity, respect and care. Globalisation, technological advance and climate change are changing work, organisations and systems in ways which foster inequality, alienation and collective risk. Against this backdrop, organisations are being urged to make their contribution to the common good, take account of the interests of multiple stakeholders, and respond ethically as well as efficiently to complex challenges (...) which transcend traditional organisational and state boundaries. Ethics, Meaningfulness, and Mutuality poses critical questions related to organisational design by challenging limits to current thinking, such as the neglect by political philosophers of markets, firms and stakeholders, or by organisational theorists of business ethics. In so doing, the book advances our understanding of the theory and practice of ethical organising. Specifically, meaningfulness and mutuality will be used to yield values and principles for a philosophy of ethical organising which includes an account of human values in morally desirable collective action, and examines the relationship of collective action to the contested concept of shared value creation. Within a philosophy of ethical organising, mutuality permits an examination of the unavoidable relational nature of collective action, whereas meaningfulness addresses fundamental human concerns for significance and leading a life we have reason to value. By addressing our status as relational beings with human needs for meaning, a philosophy of ethical organising brings critical thinking to the creation of morally informed organisational practices which are not only instrumentally beneficial for addressing wicked problems, but are normatively desirable for human flourishing. (shrink)

permits a sound and rigorously definable notion of ‘originating cause’ or causa causans—a type of transition event—of an outcome event. Mackie has famously suggested that causes form a family of ‘inus’ conditions, where an inus condition is ‘an insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition’. In this essay the needed concepts of BST theory are developed in detail, and it is then proved that the causae causantes of a given outcome event have exactly the structure of (...) a set of Mackie inus conditions. The proof requires the assumption that there is no EPR-like ‘funny business’. This seems enough to constitute a theory of ‘causation’ in at least one of its many senses. Introduction The cement of the universe Preliminaries 3.1 First definitions and postulates 3.2 Ontology: propositions 3.3 Ontology: initial events 3.4 Ontology: outcome events 3.5 Ontology: transition events 3.6 Propositional language applied to events Causae causantes 4.1 Causae causantes are basic primary transition events 4.2 Causae causantes of an outcome chain 4.3 No funny business Causae causantes and inns and inus conditions 5.1 Inns conditions of outcome chains: not quite 5.2 Inns conditions of outcome chains 5.3 Inns conditions of scattered outcome events 5.4 Inus conditions for disjunctive outcome events 5.5 Inns and inus conditions of transition events Counterfactual conditionals Appendix: Tense and modal connectives in BST. (shrink)

An organisation which operates without a ‘self-concept’ of its goals, authorised roles, governance procedures regarding sharing information, decisional powers and procedures, and distribution of benefits, or without continuous audit of its impact on its end-users, other players in the practice, and the state, does so at some ethical risk. This paper argues that a quasi-personal model of the collective ethical agency of organisations and states is helpful in suggesting some of these key areas which are liable to need careful organisational (...) design and control by leadership groups if the organisation as a whole entity (directors, operators, enablers) steered by the board/CEO as ‘mind/will,’ is to identify its stakeholders - internal and external - and treat them well. Such a quasi-personal model is outlined (QPM) in which six suggested areas should be covered by the leadership group in ethical governance: goals, roles, decision procedures, execution/verification, relations with endusers and other players in the practice, and relations with the community and the state. The ethical conception presupposed is Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics (NAVE). In subsequent papers the many advantages of QPM/NAVE which will be claimed are these: it comes with an analysis of justice which straddles individuals, families, communities, markets, and states; it offers a more coherent normative account of ‘stakeholder’ and the internal/external stakeholder distinction, by differentiating their descriptive, ethical, and causal relations to the firm as collective agent; and it suggests that business practice and business corporations are partly creatures of the state, and merely one kind of evolving and changeable institution, in a practice with a specific socio-political permit, (not the source of ethics, politics, and social policy). (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this updated and revised version of his 2008 Society for Business Ethics presidential address, Richard Nielsen documents the characteristics and extent of the 2007–2009 economic crisis and analyzes how the ethics issues of the economic crisis are structurally related to a relatively new form of capitalism, high-leverage finance capitalism. Four types of high-leverage finance capitalism are considered: hedge funds; private equity-leveraged buyouts; high-leverage, subprime mortgage banking; and high-leverage banking. The structurally related problems with the four types of high-leverage (...) finance capitalism converged in something of a perfect economic storm. Explanations for the crisis are offered in the context of the type of the high-leverage finance capitalism system that permitted and facilitated the economic crisis. Ethics issues and potential reforms are considered that may be able to mitigate the destructive effects of what Schumpeter referred to as the “creative destructive” effects of evolutionary forms of capitalism while realizing the Aristotelian economic ideal of creating wealth in such a way as to make us better people and the world a better place. (shrink)

Spoofing—placing orders on financial exchanges intending to withdraw them prior to execution—is widely legally prohibited. I argue instead on two main grounds that spoofing should be permitted and legalised. The first is that spoofing as a form of bluffing remains within the market practice of making legally binding offers—as opposed to lying or betraying trust—and primarily concerns the spoofer’s personal information. As a form of bluffing spoofing helps prevent financial speculators, in particular high-frequency algorithmic traders, from easily profiting by other (...) market actors reliably revealing their underlying preferences through their market activity. The second is that at the systemic level permitting spoofing would benefit non-speculative actors who place orders to hedge economic risk and whose activities provide the raison d’être for financial exchanges, differentiating them from simple forums for gambling. I also address potential concerns that legalised spoofing would drive speculators out of financial markets entirely and, therefore, undermine market liquidity. This work contributes to the wider debate in business ethics regarding bluffing by illustrating the acceptability of bluffs which do not betray counterparty trust or reliance on testimony by remaining within the framework of market practices. (shrink)

Moral pragmatism has been largely ignored in Business Ethics, despite its natural attraction and the fact that it is prominent in philosophy and socio-economic theories. The main premise of the book is that the complexity of today's business world does not permit a grand ethical theory, notwithstanding the different attempts made by scientists. Moral pragmatism is the 'go-to' approach where the ethical decision-making of managers varies dependent on different circumstances but it always integrates moral considerations. Ethical decision-making is (...) no longer based simply on known rules, but entails the constant dynamic interaction of circumstances, the development of new rules, managers' past experiences, their knowledge concerning ethics, and skills of moral reasoning. This book interweaves the postmodern approach to management studies and, based on its innovative research, reintroduces moral pragmatism in Business Ethics. The combination of decision-making theories, philosophy and postmodernism paves the way for future novel research in Business Ethics, making it an excellent resource for researchers, academics, and advanced students in the field of Business Ethics. Practitioners, on the other hand, will benefit by improving their skills in ethical decision-making and leadership. (shrink)

For-profit degree granting institutions are a growing and under-researched market segment that represents an extreme level of business involvement in academe. Permitting such institutions to grant degrees is a concern because the profit motive gives an incentive to operators to misrepresent the quality and benefits of such degrees. This paper addresses the issue of how adequately government quality assurance processes are able to protect the public interest. The degree program approval processes in three countries are evaluated using the UNESCO (...) guidelines for cross-border quality provision in higher education as an internationally accepted standard of quality assurance. (shrink)

For-profit universities are degree-granting institutions that are owned and operated by business corporations. This paper addresses two related public policy questions about for-profit universities. First, should governments and appropriate regulatory bodies permit for-profit universities to grant degrees in their jurisdiction? Second, should higher education policy be developed to create for-profit universities? In this paper, a property rights argument is presented to demonstrate that a corporation should have the right to offer degrees if certain regulatory tests can be met. In (...) limited circumstances, governments might consider establishing for-profit universities, but only if they promote public goods. (shrink)

The American tort system regularly conducts a sort of lottery in which plaintiffs try to name as many defendants in a tort action as they can in order to collect a large judgment from at least one of them. This procedure is encouraged under strict joint and several liability, which permits plaintiffs to recover greater damages from defendants - usually businesses - with less moral culpability for the tort than poorer defendants, who bear greater culpability. In a case involving (...) the Disney Corporation and a negligent amusement park rider, for instance, Disney was forced to pay 86% of the court award to the plaintiff, even though the jury found the company to be only 1% liable for the injury. The legal principle of joint and several liability violates morality in several different ways. Even though the principle appears to be better in the short run for plaintiffs, I will show that it fails not only to satisfy utilitarianism, but compensatory justice as well. Hence, the legal principle of joint and several liability should be eliminated in favor of a better, fairer law, which I will briefly sketch at the end. (shrink)

Many business transactions and employment contracts are wrongfully exploitative despite being consensual and beneficial to both parties, compared with a nontransaction baseline. This form of exploitation can present governments with a dilemma. Legally permitting exploitation may send the message that the public condones it. In some economic conditions, coercively enforced antiexploitation law may harm the people it is intended to help. Under these conditions, a way out of the dilemma is to enact laws with provisions that lack coercive enforcement. (...) Noncoercive law would convey the state’s condemnation of wrongful exploitation without risking the harmful effects of coercively enforced law. It would also give firms and their agents a way of explaining nonexploitative pricing decisions to investors, and it may help give precise content to the moral duty to set prices and wages fairly. Governments should thus consider noncoercive law a viable component of their responses to exploitation. (shrink)

Competitive negotiators frequently use tactics which others view as "unethical", in that these tactics either violate standards of truth telling or violate the perceived rules of negotiation. This paper sought to determine how business students viewed a number of marginally ethical negotiating tactics, and to determine the underlying factor structure of these tactics. The factor analysis of these tactics revealed five clear factors which were highly similar across the two samples, and which parallel (to a moderate degree) categories of (...) tactics proposed by earlier theory. Data from one sample also permitted comparisons of the appropriateness of certain tactics across gender, nationality, ethnic origin and perception of one's negotiating style. (shrink)