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101. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1/4
Robert J. Spitzer Getting to the Heart of Business Ethics
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Though contemporary ethical problems may be partially mitigated by legislation, increased reporting requirements, audit committees, and other external structures; real long-term improvements will not occur until organizational leaders touch the hearts of individuals and organizational culture. This article addresses three ways in which leaders can get to the heart of ethics: (1) moving individuals and the culture from a dominant ego-comparative identity to a dominant contributive (common good) identity, (2) helping stakeholders to move from a “less than tacit” awareness of principles to a reflective utilization of them; and (3) educating stakeholders in the proper use of precedents. The first point is particularly important because it controls the amount of fear and hubrisin a culture which, in turn, affects openness to ethics, moral courage, and the reflective use of principles and precedents. These techniques for internalizing ethics provide a necessary complement to today’s proliferation of external requirements.
102. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1/4
Andrea Ferrero Professional Ethics in Psychology Facing Disadvantaged Social Conditions in Argentina
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General health conditions are related to a great number of factors, including the socio-historical ones. As human beings are part of the social field, personality is also affected by them. Due to this, the main Ethics Codes of psychology, all around the world, remark in their preambles the importance of social responsibility in the practice and training in psychology. Argentina is confronted with several social problems that have severely influenced people’s mental health. In countries like Argentina, the ethical practice of psychology should respect what is explicitly stated in ethic codes about psychologists’ social responsibility, and psychologists should get more involved in promoting this issue in educational training and in national health policies.
103. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1/4
Thomas A. Hemphill, Waheeda Lillevik U.S. Pharmacists, Pharmacies, and Emergency Contraception: Walking the Business Ethics Tightrope
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This article addresses a set of exploratory questions related to emergency contraception and the right to refuse to dispense such drugs. The paper first addresses the roles of the pharmacist in American society, i.e., as professional, employee, and business owner, and the pharmacists’s identity and belief system; second, the paper reviews the status of state law and proposed legislation concerning patient/consumer access to emergency contraceptives; third, it offers an in-depth stakeholder analysis of the ethical and legal responsibilities of pharmacies to stakeholders; and fourth, the paper provides overview of the salient ethical and legal issues concerning patient/customer access to emergency contraceptives relevant to management. The conclusions discuss questionsfor further research as well as strategic/human resource management policy recommendations that balances the economic, legal, and ethical concerns of all primary stakeholders of the company/business, such as designing a management system which refers customers in a timely fashion; recognizing “conscience clauses,” while ensuring that pharmacists “do no harm” to the consumer; and disseminating management “best practices” on “conscience clauses” through joint professional/industry sponsorship.
104. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1/4
Maureen Muldoon Professional Ethics Considerations of Research Ethics Board Members in Canada
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This paper explores issues of professional ethics that are relevant to those who engage in the ethical review of research with human subjects. Codes of ethics of a number of professional groups are examined for guidance offered to research ethics board members. The thought of the philosopher, Mike Martin, is introduced as a way to highlight some of the ethical issues that reviewers encounter in their work. Martin believes that ideals contribute to the coherence of an individual’s life by shaping character. His discussion of caring, justice, trust, and professional distance offer a resource for reviewers to refl ect on the ethicaldimensions of their work.
105. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 25 > Issue: 1/4
Rajan Nataraajan, Wen-Yeh Huang, Alan J. Dubinsky Ethical Perceptions in the Retail Buyer-seller Dyad: Do They Differ?
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Extensive empirical work has examined ethical perceptions of different occupational groups in marketing. Additionally, researchers have explored ethical apperceptions of industrial customers and retail consumers. Minimal effort, though, has been directed at investigating differences in ethical perceptions between buyers and sellers, notwithstanding considerable theoretical arguments for doing so. This paper reports the results of a study that focused on differences between retail customers’ and retail salespeople’s perceptions of questionable buying and selling behaviors. Findings indicate that the two groups differ in some respect depending on which group (consumer or salesperson) is engaging in the questionable conduct. Managerial and future research implications are provided.
106. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1/4
Michael D. Stouder, Scott L. Newbert Treating Stakeholders Fairly: The Golden Rule as a Moral Guiding Principle for Entrepreneurs
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Entrepreneurs have a unique opportunity to cultivate the moral direction and development of their organizations, precisely because those organizations are new. Towards this end, we suggest that the Golden Rule is a simple, practical heuristic for entrepreneurs seeking to establish a fair social contract with their stakeholders. Because justice is an important central moral criterion in organizations, we attempt to show theoretically that the Golden Rule passes critical tests of justice, as outlined in the work of John Rawls, and can also serve as a universally relevant hypernorm which have been argued to ground all social contracts. We introduce some important contextual findings from the entrepreneurship literature in order to ground our discussion and create realistic scenariosfor entrepreneurs and their stakeholders. In so doing, we present an important potential limitation of the Golden Rule in practice and suggest how entrepreneurs might reconcile it. Ultimately, we believe that if entrepreneurs were to reflect upon their particular situation, they would have good reasons to choose to employ the Golden Rule as a part of their overall strategy for moral and economic success.
107. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1/4
Laura Dunham The Ethical Dimensions of Creative Market Action: A Framework for Identifying Issues and Implications of Entrepreneurial Ethics
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This paper proposes the importance of the ethics of entrepreneurship as a field of study. The paper argues that entrepreneurship is an ethical activity of pressing importance, as it significantly influences the sort of lives we will lead in the future. Furthermore, the distinctive nature of entrepreneurial action leads to a distinctive set of ethical problems and ethical obligations. To contribute to our understanding of entrepreneurial ethics and to help spur greater inquiry in the area, the paper offers a framework that begins to capture and organize the range of ethical issues and topics that arise in conjunction with what we term the “creative market action” of pioneering entrepreneurs. Framing entrepreneurship as a process of creative market action allows us to identify the unique ethicalcharacteristics of entrepreneurship and to take the first steps in identifying the distinctive research questions that demand our scholarly attention.
108. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1/4
Donald P. Robin A Symbiotic Link between Entrepreneurial Objectives and Ethics: The Issue of Trust Building
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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.
109. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1/4
David Y. Choi, Edmund R. Gray Financial Management Practices of Socially Responsible Entrepreneurs
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This paper examines the business practices of socially responsible entrepreneurs with particular focus on activities that directly impact their companies’ finances. We collect case studies of 30 recognized socially responsible entrepreneurial firms from a wide range of industries. We analyze how and to what extent the entrepreneurs and their companies balance their profit objectives with their social or environmental goals. Our results indicate that the companies pursue profits in manners comparable to those of most conventional businesses. However, we learn that our companies make certain deliberate exceptionsin their business practices to exercise their beliefs, although such actions may reduce profi ts. We also observe the entrepreneurs making efforts to identify situations that simultaneously increase the companies’ profits and serve their causes. Most companies choose to stay private and commit to building an enduring organization rather than pursue the conventional exit strategies. Finally, we find that many of the companies in our list commit themselves to and proactively manage formalized giving programs.
110. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 26 > Issue: 1/4
Norman E. Bowie Introduction
111. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 27 > Issue: 1/4
Jeffrey Whitman Moral Luck and the Professions
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This paper examines the phenomenon of moral luck and how it can effect professional practice. Using both Thomas Nagel’s and Bernard William’s exposition on moral luck, this paper first demonstrates the close relationship between moral luck and epistemic luck. Then, drawing on some of the lessons one might learn from the epistemologist’s treatment of epistemic luck, particularly in the debate between internalists and externalists in epistemology, strategies are developed that professionals and professional organizations might use to avoid and/or mitigate the problem moral luck presents to professional practice. Examples from various professions—the military, engineering, medicine, journalism, business—are use to illustrate both the problem of moral luck and the strategies useful in avoiding it.
112. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 27 > Issue: 1/4
Walter Block Is there a Human Right to Medical Insurance?
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This paper claims that health insurance is not a human right; that the reason the medical care industry is in such an unsatisfactorystate is that there is not enough competition in the field. To wit, there are government interferences on both the supply and demand sides of health care; the former in terms of restrictions on entry for physicians, the latter based on the moral hazard attendant on the subsidization of medicine.
113. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 27 > Issue: 1/4
Mette Ebbesen, Birthe D. Pedersen The Role of Ethics in the Daily Work of Oncology Physicians and Molecular Biologists—Results of an Empirical Study
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This article presents results from an empirical investigation of the role and importance of ethics in the daily work of Danish oncologyphysicians and Danish molecular biologists. The study is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with three groups of respondents: a group of oncology physicians working in a clinic at a public hospital and two groups of molecular biologists conducting basic research, one group employed at a public university and the other in a private biopharmaceutical company.We found that oncology physicians consider ethical evaluation as part of their daily work. They discuss how to treat patients in groups and they have interdisciplinary seminars. In contrast, molecular biologists employed at the university do not think that basic research causes significant ethical problems, they do not talk about ethics in their daily work and they do not want to prioritise seminars on ethics. Molecular biologists employed in a private biopharmaceutical company do not think that basic research causes significant ethical problems, but the private company prioritises ethical evaluation. If the company behaves unethical, they will be punished by the consumers and by the investors in the last end. In general, oncology physicians working in the clinic experience a closer relationship between their daily work and ethical problems concerning human beings than molecular biologists conducting basic research.
114. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 27 > Issue: 1/4
Semra F. Aşcigil, Orcid-ID Demet Tekin, Mark N. K. Saunders, Adrian Thornhill Downsizing and Restructuring in Smaller Firms: Survivors’ Perceptions
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Downsizing is a process whereby human relations management emerges as a critical skill in its effective management. This paperis about perceptions of employees of a small-sized Turkish firm who survived successive downsizing decisions. It was found that downsizing affected the organizational justice-related perceptions of survivors. The questionnaire used to explore organizational justice-related perceptions involved three dimensions and was developed by Saunders and Thornhill (1999). Procedural, interactional and distributive justice-related perceptions of survivors were influenced by the way management handled the process. Management credibility, communication and commitment were other variables studied. The findings supported the view that downsizing not only affects the victims but also the survivors.
115. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 27 > Issue: 1/4
Robin T. Peterson Television Commercial Depiction of Learning Related Activities for High School Students
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This manuscript provides coverage of an inquiry into the depiction of the roles assumed by high school models in television commercials. Hypotheses propose that learning-related activities are less often presented than other activities and when presented tend to be less favorable than other activities. The study produces evidence to the effect that scholastic roles occupy a less important position and are less favorably depicted, as compared to other roles. However, a large proportion of the models in the advertisements were presented in a positive manner.
116. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/4
Jay R. Tombaugh, Elaine F. Tombaugh Can Spiritual Leadership Lead Us Not Into Temptation?
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This paper offers clarity regarding the convergence of two important issues in today’s business environment. First is the growingconcern over ethical failures of leadership. The obsessive self-interest and egoistic concern for personal gain exhibited by some corporate executives is particularly difficult to understand and overcome. Second is the growing realization that business must embrace the broad concept of personal spirituality. Moral reflection and choice are at the core of ethical leadership, and spiritual and moral development are interdependent. Personal spirituality impacts the leader’s moral stability by contributing to strength of character, reducing egoistic needs, providing means and motivation for true moral choices and actions, and creating a strong moral identity. Current theory and research on spiritual leadership fails to adequately portray the pivotal role of the leader’s personal spiritualtransformation and sense of spirituality in ethical decision-making.
117. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/4
Subodh P. Kulkarni “Justice as Freedom”: Do We Have a New Approach to a Firm’s Enterprise Strategy?
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A firm’s enterprise strategy denotes what a firm stands for. Despite its importance, there has been little research on this topic. Furthermore, the theoretical bases underlying the existing approaches to enterprise strategy suffer from several limitations. In view of these shortcomings, this paper invokes Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach (SCA) and its notion of “justice as freedom” as a normative foundation of enterprise strategy. Toward this end, it integrates different streams in the stakeholder theory/business ethics and economics literature. It focuses on the stakeholder capability of “having a voice,” and the managerial capability of “using the knowledge to provide stakeholders a voice and freedom.”
118. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/4
Christopher Michaelson Meaningful Work and Moral Worth
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In general, meaningful work has been conceived to be a matter of institutional obligation and individual choice. In other words, solong as the institution has fulfilled its objective moral obligation to make meaningful work possible, it is up to the subjective volition of the individual to choose or not to choose work that is perceived to be meaningful. However, this conception is incomplete in at least two ways. First, it neglects the role of institutional volition; that is, it does not emphasize enough that the institution’s purpose itself can be meaningful (or meaningless). Second, the standard conception of meaningful work says surprisingly little about the moral obligation of the individual—to anyone but the individual herself—to pursue meaningful work. The immediate and sustained responses to the September 11, 2001, attacks suggest that there is an important relationship between meaningful work and the moral worth of institutions and individuals. To explore that relationship, this paper examines stories of three jobs that tragically coincided on September 11, 2001: broker, firefighter, and terrorist.
119. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/4
Todd Furman, Bill Hartmann Beguiling Would-Be Serpents: Gerald Dworkin, Bear Stearns, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
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In his classic paper, The Serpent Beguiled Me And I Did Eat, Gerald Dworkin makes the case that, without probable cause, the useof Proactive Law Enforcement Techniques (PALETs) is morally impermissible. Call this prohibition Dworkin’s Rule (DR). Here we argue that there are two reasonable exceptions to DR—the use of PALETs, without probable cause, is justifi ed when employed against High Level Government Officials (HLGOs) and High Level Business Officials (HLBOs). Moreover, these exceptions are consistent with Dworkin’s notion of Ideal Criminal Sanctioning. Finally, if society were to endorse the use of PALETs on HLBOs, we might be able to dispose of the current bane of American business, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and let business get back to the business of business.
120. Business and Professional Ethics Journal: Volume > 28 > Issue: 1/4
Peter Haried, Derek Nazareth Examining International Information Technology Sourcing through an Ethical Lens: An Application of Alternative Ethical Frameworks
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This paper examines the international information technology (IT) sourcing decision from an ethical perspective. The internationalsourcing of IT activities, termed IT offshoring in this paper, has received considerable attention recently. Differing views on IT offshoring prevail, ranging from the protection view that IT offshoring steals jobs away from the domestic economy, to the market view that it creates jobs and improves the overall global economy through market efficiencies. Despite the large amount of material devoted to managing and evaluating the practice of IT offshoring, the ethical issues surrounding the decision has received little attention. This paper seeks to address that need, examining the IT offshoring decision through the application of a series of ethical frameworks. Several normative theories of ethics, including stockholder theory, stakeholder theory, social contract theory, utilitarianism, and a Kantian’ categorical imperative framework, are employed to gain insights into the ethical aspects of this practice. Our resulting framework represents an early attempt to examine the ethics of the IT offshoring and provides managers with practical guidelines and insights when addressing the IT offshoring decision.