The Morality of Risk Modeling

This article applies the concept of prudence to develop the characteristics of responsible risk-modeling practices in the insurance industry. A critical evaluation of the risk-modeling process suggests that ethical judgments are emergent rather than static, vague rather than clear, particular rather than universal, and still defensible according to the discipline’s established theory, which will support a range of judgments. Thus, positive moral guides for responsible behavior are of limited practical value. Instead, by being prudent, modelers can improve their ability to deal with the ethical and technical complexity of the risk-modeling process. While the application of prudence to resolve ethical challenges in risk modeling, an issue of practical importance to managers, is a first in the literature, the practice of applying an ethical lens to issues of pragmatic importance for managers is well established in Maak and Pless (J Bus Ethics 66:99–115, 2006a; Responsible leadership, 2006b) among others.

     

The Morality of Good Business

We are taught, in business as in Christian life, that well doing will lead to well being, in the long run. (But how long is the long run?) Those in business have an important role to play in the moral and the political well-being of our society.     

Tractable Morality

This article discusses five propositions about managerial moral tractability -- that is, a morality that is amenable to the complexity of managers’ continual pressure to decide and act -- in their customer relations. The propositions come from the comparison of three case studies of different types of managers. To analyze the morality of managers, discursive practices of managers are studied. At the end of the article also some consideration is given to “information strategies” of managers, in relation to their tractable morality.Gjalt de Graaf received his Ph.D. at the Rotterdam School of Management of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He worked for two years as an assistant professor ‘‘strategic management” at the Faculty of Economics and Business Studies of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Currently he works as a post-doc “Integrity of Governance” at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.     

论市场经济条件下的企业道德建设

社会主义市场经济是法制经济，又是道德经济。加强企业道德建设是社会主义市场经济发展的客观需求；企业的道德建设在社会主义市场经济条件下是企业发展的内在动力；社会主义企业的道德建设是对市场经济的道德超越。     

论执政能力建设的政治道德基石

政治道德是指在政治实践和政治生活中形成的合情合理、合乎正义的行为道德规范以及从政者的思想道德品质的总和。在执政能力建设中，政治道德凸显为执政为民、求真务实、廉洁高效、公平正义等执政价值理念的实现，它构成执政能力建设的坚实基础。     

The Morality of Bluffing: A Reply to Allhoff

In a recent paper that appeared in this journal Fritz Allhoff addresses the morality of bluffing in negotiations¹. He focuses on cases in which people misstate their reservation price in negotiations, e.g., suppose that I am selling a house and tell a prospective buyer that $300,000 is absolutely the lowest price that I will accept, when I know that I would be willing to accept as little as $270,000 for the house rather than continue to try to sell it. Allhoff criticizes my (qualified) defense of bluffing in my paper Second Thoughts on Bluffing,² and offers what he takes to be a more plausible defense of bluffing. Allhoffs criticisms rest on several serious misinterpretations of my views. He ascribes to me several arguments that I dont make. He also attributes to me an unqualified defense of bluffing that I explicitly reject. I briefly document this in Section 1. In Sections 2 and 3 I explain and criticize Allhoffs positive views about bluffing and the morality of bluffing.Thomas Carson is professor of philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Value and the Good Life and The Status of Morality. He is the co-editor of Moral Relativism and Morality and the Good Life. He is the author of numerous papers on ethical theory and business ethics and is a member of the editorial board of Business Ethics Quarterly and Journal of Business Ethics. He is currently working on a book entitled Lying and Deception: Theory and Practice.     

论农民思想道德素质对农户家庭贫富的影响及对农村反贫困的意义——农民民生问题的一种研究视角

认定人的思想道德素质是人力资本的内容,是将人的思想道德素质作为影响经济增长和经济发展的内生变量引入经济分析的基本理论前提。基于理论分析的视角,探讨人的思想道德素质影响经济增长和经济发展的总路径,诠释五种类型的农民典型落后思想素质导致农户家庭贫困的具体路径。这一具体路径遵循了发展经济学家关于人的思想影响经济增长和经济发展的总路径。     

Whistle-Blowing and Morality

Whistle-blowing is generally considered from the viewpoint of professional morality. Morality rejects the idea of choice and the interests of the professional as immoral. Yet the dreadful retaliations against the messengers of the truth make it necessary for morality to leave a way out of whistle-blowing. This is why it forges rights (sometimes called duties) to trump the duty to the public prescribed by professional codes. This serves to hide the obvious fact that whether to blow the whistle is indeed a choice, not a matter of objective duty. One should also notice that if it fails to achieve anything then blowing the whistle was the wrong decision (or maybe the right decision that nobody would want to make). There is nevertheless a tendency to judge it based on the motivation of the whistle blower. In a way, whistle blowers should strive to act like saints. Yet, it is logically impossible to hold both whistle-blowing as mandatory and whistle-blowers as heroes or saints. Moreover, this tends to value the great deeds of a few over the lives of the many, which is incompatible with the basic assumptions of morality. But consistency is not a main feature of professional morality.     

再论经济活动中的公民道德建设

《公民道德建设实施纲要》颁布以来,我国的公民道德建设取得了可喜的成绩。但是,在汹涌澎湃的全球化浪潮和西方文化思想,价值观等因素的影响下,由于经济利益的驱动,现实生活中公民道德建设仍然存在不少问题。以胡锦涛为总书记的中共中央提出以人为本、构建和谐社会,需要全体公民的道德水平来支撑。作为道德要素的诚信问题,应当成为所有公民在经济活动中共同遵守的准则。只有政府诚信、企业诚信、行业诚信、公民诚信,整个社会才能诚信。经济活动中的各种不道德行为和现象才会减少,全社会公民的道德水平才能有一个飞跃,社会才会和谐。     

Religion and Business Ethics: The Lessons from Political Morality

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.     

营销道德是企业立足世界舞台的基石

从目前社会关切的热点问题,显示出了我国加入WTO、参与国际市场竞争以后企业构建营销道德的重要性。市场经济是法制经济,也是信用经济。营销道德是一个企业的生命。所以必须从国家、企业和消费者三个方面来提高营销道德。     

Urban Legends: The Word-of-Mouth Communication of Morality Through Negative Story Content

This study investigates factors influencing the diffusion of negative information via word-of-mouth communication of urban legends in the consumer environment. An experiment was conducted in which three aspects of a recent urban legend were manipulated: the intent of the central character (altruistic vs negative), the outcome of the story (positive vs negative), and the presence or absence of a brand name. Results indicate that intent to communicate an urban legend is lowest when the central character is altruistic and the outcome of the story is positive. These results are consistent with previous suggestions that consumers circulate urban legends in order to communicate negative information involving moralistic stories possessing an ironic twist.     

The Price of International Business Morality: Twenty Years Under The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

Last year marked the 20th anniversary of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977. The FCPA is the first and only statute prohibiting bribery and other corrupt business practices by U.S. citizens and companies conducting business overseas. This paper provides an overview of the FCPA during the two decades of its existence. More specifically, the objectives of this paper are four-fold. First, the paper provides background information about the FCPA of 1977 and subsequent amendments in 1988. Second, the paper discusses the enforcement of the FCPA since its passage by examining the number of cases prosecuted under the FCPA and the respective penalties imposed. Third, the paper discusses the economic impact of the FCPA by addressing whether the FCPA places U.S. firms at a competitive disadvantage. Fourth, the paper provides public policy recommendations to expand the reach and scope of the FCPA. It covers efforts to criminalize bribery through multilateral organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Organization of American States (OAS). It also covers bilateral arrangements and efforts by non-governmental organizations such as Transparency International.     

Fraud and the Politics of Morality

Most large frauds develop only gradually and incidentally. When things fall apart it is politic to call it anything but fraud. The author is a member of the Department of Sociology, University of Liverpool, POB 147, Liverpool L69 3BX.     

The Natural Link Between Virtue Ethics and Political Virtue: The Morality of the Market

Against the idea that market economy is something greedy and immoral, we will set out the idea that market economy based on firms has a very positive moral content: the possibility of excellence of human action. Firms based on people acting together, sharing the culture of the organization, toward virtue-based ethics, create and distribute most of the economy’s wealth, innovate, trade and raise living standards. We will present a criterion which states that social coordination improves if the process of creation of individual possibilities of action, which is carried out in the social institutions—in our case, the firm—is extended. There is a retention of possibilities that is formed in the institutions and transmitted culturally. In that moment entrepreneurship emerges, the creative tension that expands, maintains, or diminishes the possibilities of action. Hence, the firm is the institution that carries out a very important practice: fostering new possibilities of individual action. In this paper, we will adopt the point of the view of the acting person. The reality we observe is personal action within its cultural and institutional dimensions. A theory of personal action in societal institutions bridges the way from virtue-based ethics toward ethics of institutions.     

Morality and marketing human organs

Recent break-throughs in surgery and the discovery of an effective immunosupressive drug called cyclosporin, have brought a Renaissance in organ transplants. These medical advances have also heightened concern over the already critical shortage of body organs. Several alternatives have been suggested which may help alleviate the organ shortage. One such alternative is to allow commerce in human organs. This article discusses the morality of commercialization of human organs within the framework of several ethical theories. Shaheen Borna is Associate Professor of Marketing at the Ball State University and has written several articles on advertising. Latest publication: The Informative and Persuasive Functions of Advertising: a Moral Appraisal — A Comment, Journal of Business Ethics 4 (1985), pp. 151–153.The first draft of this paper was presented to the faculty of Ball State University in the Bureau of Business Research Faculty Seminar Series. The author would like to thank all the faculty who provided insightful comments, particularly Dean Palomba, professors Williams and Hendrix. The author also would like to thank Mrs. Sandra Marsh for her invaluable editorial help.     

The Third Eye: Exploring Guanxi and Relational Morality in the Workplace

We examine the use of Confucian relational morality as an alternative reference point to that of modernist morality in judging workplace ethical conduct. A semi-structured interview based study involving 46 ethnic Chinese managers and 30 non-Chinese expatriate managers in Singapore, provided evidence of the use of traditional guanxi-linked morality as a moral resource by some of the former group in judging workplace ethical dilemmas. While such morality played only a minor role in moral reasoning, and was largely overshadowed by modernist morality, the research nonetheless demonstrates that moral reasoning reflects wider cultural heritage, and is not merely a function of corporate culture and individual moral development.