This article surveys western business ethics' recent history to show how this ethic has neglected recently its religious traditions and become construed more narrowly as an applied philosophy and social science. It argues that this narrowness has confused business ethics' role in business education and helped to weaken the distinctiveness of certain institutions of higher education. It then suggests ways that western business ethics might become more integrated, interesting, and autonomous as an academic discipline by incorporating its key religious traditions.

Today's sweatshops violate our notions of justice, yet they continue to flourish. This is so because we have not settled on criteria that would allow us to condemn and do away with them and because the poor working conditions in certain places are preferable to the alternative of no job at all. In this paper, we examine these phenomena. We consider the definitional dilemmas posed by sweatshops by routing a standard definition of sweatshops through the precepts put forward in the (...) literature on justice and virtue ethics. We conclude that fixing on definitions is pointless and misleading and that we are better off looking at whether or not a workplace violates the basic human rights of workers and whether or not the working conditions there cohere with situations on which we have already rendered judgments. In the end, we suggest guidelines for businesses that operate in the global workplace to help them avoid charges of running sweatshops. These recommendations account for the harsh living conditions in certain developing and emerging countries as well as the norms of societies in developed countries. (shrink)

This article argues for the compatibility of casuistry and the business case method. It describes the salient features of casuistryand the case method, shows how the two methods are similar yet different, and suggests how elements of casuistry might benefit theuse of the case method in management education. Toward these ends, it shows how casuistry and the case method are both inductive and practical methods of reasoning focussed on single settings and real-life situations and how both methods stress that real-life (...) decision making is not the exclusive domain of experts. It also shows how casuistry and the case method are not identical processes but have different purposes and emphasize order and problem-resolution differently. In the end, Casuistry and the Business Case Method suggests that, despite their differences, casuistry and the case method might be brought together to benefit business management and the field of business ethics. (shrink)

This article begins by showing how recent controversies over the widespread promotion of artificially gene-altered foods are rooted in opposing ethical and ideological worldviews. It then explains how these contrasting worldviews have led to a practical, ethical, and ideological standoff and, finally, suggests the combined use of casuistry and virtue ethics as a way for both sides to move ahead on this pressing issue.

Brings together three important processes for business ethics: casuistry, virtue ethics, and the business case method. In doing so, it considers the overlap and synergy of casuistry and virtue ethics, the similarities and differences of casuistry and the business case method, and the relationships between emerging and well-established cases. The goal of the book is twofold: to provide a distinctly practical method for moral decision-making within the context of business and to illustrate how contemporary vexing issues are similar to those (...) of the past and how they might be resolved satisfactorily. (shrink)

This article focuses on the next generation of entrepreneurs likely to emerge in Silicon Valley. It profiles two tech-savvy college students and describes the Valley’s demographics and subculture to show how previous models of the entrepreneur (the pre-Internet and geek subculture varieties) are blending to form a new sort of entrepreneur for a computer industry in transition.

This paper examines the ethics of government policies and automobile industry strategies as China rapidly adopts the automobile on a widespread basis. It begins by looking at the context of auto adoption in America in the twentieth century and then contrasts this with the situation in China today. It next analyzes government and auto company strategies along three moral criteria and concludes that current strategies are consistent yet ethically wrongful. In the end, it recommends the abandonment of current antiquated harm-inducing (...) strategies in favor of new approaches incorporating innovative technologies that account for local preferences. (shrink)

Introduction to a collection of articles originally presented at a February 2001 conference hosted by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University.

This article focuses on the next generation of entrepreneurs likely to emerge in Silicon Valley. It profiles two tech-savvy college students and describes the Valley’s demographics and subculture to show how previous models of the entrepreneur (the pre-Internet and geek subculture varieties) are blending to form a new sort of entrepreneur for a computer industry in transition.

For more than thirty years the writings and influence of one man in particular have dominated and directed the field of modern business ethics. We are indebted to two of his fellow‐Americans for this portrait of Richard T. De George. R. Edward Freeman is the Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration and Director of the Olsson Center for Ethics at The Darden School, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22906‐6550; and Martin Calkins, SJ, is a Research Assistant (...) in the Olsson Center and a doctoral student in business ethics at the Darden School. (shrink)

For more than thirty years the writings and influence of one man in particular have dominated and directed the field of modern business ethics. We are indebted to two of his fellow‐Americans for this portrait of Richard T. De George. R. Edward Freeman is the Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration and Director of the Olsson Center for Ethics at The Darden School, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22906‐6550; and Martin Calkins, SJ, is a Research Assistant (...) in the Olsson Center and a doctoral student in business ethics at the Darden School. (shrink)

We examine the Spiritual Exercises developed by St. Ignatius Loyola for the purpose of informing the structure of reflection as a tool in business ethics. At present, reflection in business is used to clarify moods, expectations, theories of use, and defining moments. We suggest here that Ignatius' Exercises, which focus on ends, engage the emotions and imagination, use role modeling, and require a response, might be useful as a model for reflection in business.

Martin Calkins proposes the “combined use of casuistry and virtue ethics as a way for both sides to move ahead on [the] pressing issue [of agricultural biotechnology].” However, his defense of this methodology relies on a set of mistaken, albeit familiar, claims regarding the normative resources of virtue ethics: (1) virtue ethics is egoistic; (2) virtue ethics cannot defend any particular account of the virtues as the objectively correct ones and is therefore inextricably relativistic; (3) virtue ethics cannot (...) supply a procedure for providing practical or policy guidance in concrete situations; and (4) virtue ethics cannot adequately account for the possibility of conflicting or partial virtues. After a brief overview of the basic structure of virtue ethics, I take up each of these misconceptions in turn. I conclude with some comments on the implications of these considerations for Calkins’s proposed methodology for addressing theissue of agricultural biotechnology. (shrink)

The increasing proliferation of the automobile is one of the hardest practical and ethical problems contemporary societies face, in terms of technology production and use. Nuclear weaponry may be our number one threat, but it is in the hands of a very few, almost inaccessible people. Nanotechology may tum the planet into a "gray goo," in Bill Joy's famous terms; and "superintelligent" machines and "uploaded minds" may engender megalomaniacal power-seekers; but such technologies remain highly speculative. Yet, the automobile is both (...) very real and at hand, as well as in the hands—and daily options—of cotnmon persons who can choose not to use it each time they step into the driver's seat. These daily choices are precisely what Calkins's "automobile proponents' strategies," as if one monohthic force, aim on controlling. He marshals impressive and sobering statistics and evidence to show that not only are the numbers of automobiles in China and India rising astronomically, but a few key persons and agencies are pushing this increase and thus—in full awareness—altering these countries' habitability. It is this full awareness that forms the basis of the book's ethical criticism. (shrink)

Online supplement, "Mulsow: Additions to Notes drawn from the 2002 edition of Moderne aus dem Untergrund" full versions of nearly 300 notes that were truncated in the print edition. Hosted on H. C. Erik Midelfort's website. Martin Mulsow's seismic reinterpretation of the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany won awards and renown in its original German edition, and now H. C. Erik Midelfort's translation makes this sensational book available to English-speaking readers. In Enlightenment Underground, Mulsow shows that even in (...) the late seventeenth century some thinkers in Germany ventured to express extremely dangerous ideas, but did so as part of a secret underground. Scouring manuscript collections across northern Europe, Mulsow studied the writings of countless hitherto unknown radical jurists, theologians, historians, and dissident students who pushed for the secularization of legal, political, social, and religious knowledge. Often their works circulated in manuscript, anonymously, or as clandestinely published books. Working as a philosophical microhistorian, Mulsow has discovered the identities of several covert radicals and linked them to circles of young German scholars, many of whom were connected with the vibrant radical cultures of the Netherlands, England, and Denmark. The author reveals how radical ideas and contributions to intellectual doubt came from Socinians and Jews, church historians and biblical scholars, political theorists, and unemployed university students. He shows that misreadings of humorous or ironic works sometimes gave rise to unintended skeptical thoughts or corrosively political interpretations of Christianity. This landmark book overturns stereotypical views of the early Enlightenment in Germany as cautious, conservative, and moderate, and replaces them with a new portrait that reveals a movement far more radical, unintended, and puzzling than previously suspected. (shrink)

1. Conceptions of the nature of value are of two main types: they are either objective, or realistic, or else subjective, that is, psychological. The immediately following pages are devoted to the critical consideration of the first of these, the realistic conception of value as “an indefinable quality which attaches to things independently of consciousness.” According to this view, things have value as they have form or colour or volume. A rose, for example, has the qualities of redness, of fragrance, (...) and also of beauty; a book has the qualities of rectangularity, of twelve-ounce weight, and also of truth; a negro has the qualities of erectness, of brownness, and also of moral goodness or badness. Beauty, truth, and moral goodness, grouped together as ‘values,’ or ‘worths,’ or ‘goods,’ are from this point of view as indefinable and ‘absolute’ as the primary and secondary qualities: indeed, they are together known as “tertiary qualities.’ In G. E. Moore's words, a value or “ ‘good’ is a simple notion, just as ‘yellow’ is a simple notion”; and “just as you cannot, by any manner of means, explain to anyone who does not already know it what yellow is, so you cannot explain what good is.”. (shrink)

On the issue of abortion, Ireland and Poland have been among the most conservative countries in Europe. Their legal and cultural approaches to this issue have been deeply influenced by the institution of the Catholic Church and its purported role as a defender of an authentic national identity. However, their political climates for abortion reform are increasingly divergent: Ireland has liberalised its abortion law substantially since 2018, while Poland is moving towards further criminalisation with the repeated introduction of restrictive laws (...) in parliament. Both have seen active pro-choice movements who mobilise for reform and widespread non-compliance with their restrictive abortion laws, but the policy impact of these trends varies significantly. What accounts for this difference? This article draws on comparative analysis of Ireland and Poland to assess their divergent trajectories on abortion reform, arguing that the most significant driver of change between the two is the disparity in influence of the Catholic Church on politics and policymaking. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 68-70.

Originally published in 1919, this book was mainly written in an attempt to 'present and defend the theory that the texture of the Universe is through-and-through spiritual'. An argument is developed based around the primary nature of experience and its varying qualities and contexts. From this perspective, the text takes issue with the purely objective approaches the author perceives as being inherent in 'neo-realist' and 'logical atomist' schools of thought. Textual notes are incorporated throughout. This book will be of value (...) to anyone with an interest in philosophical idealism and spiritualism. (shrink)

This chapter is Mary Whiton Calkins’ articulation and defense of the personalistic conception of reality.