Moral Imagination and Systems Thinking

Taking the lead from Susan Wolf's and Linda Emanuel's work on systems thinking, and developing ideas from Moberg's, Seabright's and my work on mental models and moral imagination, in this paper I shall argue that what is often missing in management decision-making is a systems approach. Systems thinking requires conceiving of management dilemmas as arising from within a system with interdependent elements, subsystems, and networks of relationships and patterns of interaction. Taking a systems approach and coupling it with moral imagination, now engaged on the organizational and systemic as well as individual levels of decision-making, I shall conclude, is a methodology that encourages managers and companies to think more imaginatively and to engage in integrating moral decision-making into ordinary business decisions. More importantly this sort of thinking is a means to circumvent what often appear to be intractable problems created by systemic constraints for which no individual appears to be responsible.     

The Exercise of Moral Imagination in Stigmatized Work Groups

This study introduces the concept of moral imagination in a work context to provide an ethical approach to the controversial relationships between dirty work and dirty workers. Moral imagination is assessed as an essential faculty to overcome the stigma associated with dirty work and facilitate the daily work lives of workers. The exercise of moral imagination helps dirty workers to face the moral conflicts inherent in their tasks and to build a personal stance toward their occupation. Finally, we argue that organizations with dirty work groups should actively adopt measures to encourage their employees’ exercise of moral imagination. This study investigates how organizations might create conditions that inspire moral imagination, particularly with regard to the importance of organizational culture as a means to enhance workers’ moral sensitivity. Furthermore, this investigation analyzes different company practices that may derive from a culture committed to moral imagination.     

Editorial Adieu: Cultivating Moral Courage in Business

Leaving an editorial chair provides an opportunity for the departing incumbent to deliver a final message to his readers. Seven years after founding Business Ethics. A European Review the editor can offer no better valedictory than to explore the role of moral courage in the ethical conduct of business. Not only does this provide an excellent illustration of the recent recovery of the subject of “virtue” ethics in moral philosophy in general, as well as in the application of morality to business. It also serves to highlight the important difference between ‘business ethics’ as a term applied to the study of right and wrong behaviour in business, and ‘ethical business’, which is business actually conducted on ethical lines. For the difference between behaving rightly and wrongly in any area of human activity, including that of business, is not simply a matter of knowledge, or of finding the “correct” answer. There is a crucial psychological gap between knowing what one ought to do and then actually doing it; as Ovid ruefully observed, we see and approve the better things, yet we follow the worse. This is where courage comes in, for the gap between ethical perception and ethical performance is bridged by moral courage, as the following article suggests. More colloquially, the author is accustomed to conclude his classroom teaching on business ethics by observing that it is one thing to work out, often laboriously and hesitantly, what is the correct line of behaviour to follow; it is quite another thing to have the guts to follow it. An early version of this paper was delivered in Gresham College, London, while a more developed account dates from the First World Congress of the International Society of Business, Economics and Ethics, held in Tokyo in 1996. The following is reprinted from International Business Ethics: Challenges and Approaches , edited by George Enderle earlier this year and published by the University of Notre Dame Press and Hong Kong University Press.     

An Exploratory Investigation of the Effect of Ethical Culture in Activating Moral Imagination

Moral imagination is a process that involves a thorough consideration of the ethical elements of a decision. We sought to explore what might distinguish moral imagination from other ethical approaches within a complex business simulation. Using a three-component model of moral imagination, we sought to discover whether organization cultures with a salient ethics theme activate moral imagination. Finding an effect, we sought an answer to whether some individuals were more prone to being influenced in this way by ethical cultures. We found that employees with strong moral identities are less influenced by such cultures than employees whose sense of self is not defined in moral terms. David F. Caldwell is the Stephen and Patrica Schott Professor of Business in the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. Dennis Moberg is the Wilkinson Professor of Management and Ethics in the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University.     

Mental Models, Moral Imagination and System Thinking in the Age of Globalization

After experiments with various economic systems, we appear to have conceded, to misquote Winston Churchill that “free enterprise is the worst economic system, except all the others that have been tried.” Affirming that conclusion, I shall argue that in today’s expanding global economy, we need to revisit our mind-sets about corporate governance and leadership to fit what will be new kinds of free enterprise. The aim is to develop a values-based model for corporate governance in this age of globalization that will be appropriate in a variety of challenging cultural and economic settings. I shall present an analysis of mental models from a social constructivist perspective. I shall then develop the notion of moral imagination as one way to revisit traditional mind-sets about values-based corporate governance and outline what I mean by systems thinking. I shall conclude with examples for modeling corporate governance in multi-cultural settings and draw tentative conclusions about globalization. Patricia H. Werhane is the Wicklander Chair of Business Ethics and Director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics at DePaul University with a joint appointment as the Peter and Adeline Ruffin Professor of Business Ethics in the Darden School at the University of Virginia. Professor Werhane has published numerous articles and is the author or editor of twenty books including Persons, Rights and Corporations, Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism, Moral Imagination and Managerial Decision-Making with Oxford University Press and Employment and Employee Rights (with Tara J. Radin and Norman Bowie) with Blackwell’s. She is the founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Business Ethics Quarterly, the journal of the Society for Business Ethics.     

The Antecedents of Moral Imagination in the Workplace: A Social Cognitive Theory Perspective

As corporate scandals proliferate, organizational researchers and practitioners have made calls for research providing guidance for those wishing to influence positive moral decision-making and behavior in the workplace. This study incorporates social cognitive theory and a vignette-based cognitive measure for moral imagination to examine (a) moral attentiveness and employee creativity as important antecedents of moral imagination and (b) creativity as a moderator of the positive relationship between moral attentiveness and moral imagination. Based on the results from supervisor–subordinate dyadic data (N = 162) obtained from employed students, hypotheses were largely supported as expected. Implications are discussed.     

沉思有多沉

马可·奥勒留的《沉思录》,大学刚毕业的时候就买到了,当时看不懂也就没看完。好像是前年或者还要往前,三联书店出了一套小开本的丛书,分成了四辑,其中有爱默生的《代表人物》、布伯的《我与你》、瓦肯罗德的《一个热爱艺术的修士的内心倾诉》,第四辑当中就有一本马可·奥勒留的《沉思录》,是何怀宏翻译的,很清新的封面,便又买了一本,这次读得差不多,也想得差不多。     

2009畅想

2008：注定是不平凡的一年。金融危机突如其来,国际航运市场从巅峰跌入谷底,BDI指数一落千丈,业界纷纷惊呼：“冬天”来了!     

想象力，让空间更有活力

MINI联手Anomaly在杭州黄龙万科中心K-lab发起停车场,再创想改造项目,在解决城市空间痛点的同时,为人们的日常停车带来全新体验。停车场是人们日常出行的第一站,也是抵达目的地前的最后一站。作为重要的城市空间,今天大部分的停车场却寄居地下,空间狭窄逼仄、导视系统不清、冰冷灰暗。     

Exploring the Diversity of Virtues Through the Lens of Moral Imagination: A Qualitative Inquiry into Organizational Virtues in the Turkish Context

The purpose of this article is to introduce a multidimensional framework based on the concept of moral imagination for analysing and capturing diverse virtues in contemporary Turkish organizations. Based on qualitative interviews with 58 managers in Turkey, this article develops an inventory of Turkish organizational virtues each of which can be associated with a different form of virtuous organizing. The inventory consists of nine forms of moral imagination, which map the multitude of virtues and moral emotions in organizations. Nine emergent forms of moral imagination are based on: integrity, affection, diligence, inspiration, wisdom, trust, gratefulness, justice, and harmony. The findings have made a contribution to the expanding literature on how Islamic organizations develop their business ethics through a repertoire of virtues. An empirical account of the range of virtues in organizational contexts that have emerged as a result of the hybridization of Islamic virtue/aesthetics and neoliberal capitalism in contemporary Turkey is provided. A theoretical contribution is made to business ethics literature through a phenomenology of virtues that provides unique insights on diverse forms of moral imagination in contemporary Turkey where Islam and neoliberal capitalism dynamically co-exist.     

ARXAN,Just Beyond Your Imagination

Tired of the hustle and bustle in the crowded city? Don't worry; we always have some other options to please ourselves. Sited in the north-east of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China, neighboring on Mongolia, and also nearby Russian, there is a paradise on earth. Named "Saint Spring & Snowy City", Arxan is everything more than your expectation.     

Immoral Imagination and Revenge in Organizations

Malevolence and cruelty are commonly attributed to a failure of moral reasoning or a lack of moral imagination. We present the contrasting viewpoint – immorality as an active, creative, or resourceful act. More specifically, we develop the concept of "immoral imagination" (Jacobs, 1991) and explore how it can enter into Rest's (1986) four processes of decision making: sensitivity, judgment, intention, and implementation. The literature on revenge and workplace deviance illustrates these processes.     

物流业营业税制改革设想

现代物流业作为新兴的第三产业,在我国当前社会经济发展中发挥着越来越重要的支撑和引领作用。然而由于现行税制的不完善,在一定程度上阻碍了我国物流业的进一步发展。本文结合物流企业现行营业税制的相关规定,分析其存在的重复课征、税率不一等阻碍物流业发展的诸多问题,提出为物流业减负的营业税制调整和改革的基本设想。     

Moral Markets and Moral Managers Revisited

In the wake of recent corporate scandals, this paper examines the claim made by John Boatright that business ethics, as it is currently conceived, “rests on a mistake.” Ethics in business should not be achieved through managerial vision, discretion or responsibility; rather, ethics should shape the design of institutions that regulate business from the outside. What ethicists should advocate for, according to Boatright, are moral markets not moral managers. I explore the empirical and normative dimensions of his claim with special attention paid to the extent to which Boatright’s development of the economic theory of the firm supports his position. I conclude by suggesting some reasons why moral markets and moral management are compatible frameworks for corporate reform.     

e时代:中国电子商务人才培养策略

电子商务的实施是一项庞大的社会系统工程,它不仅涉及到信息基础结构建设和应用,涉及到数据标准化建设和处理,涉及到增值网联接、使用、管理和维护,涉及到贸易、海关、银行、工商、税收、交通运输等多种行业,还涉及到企业、个人等诸多方面.所以电子商务人才的培养不仅包括电子商务技术人才、电子商务应用人才还要包括电子商务管理人才.目前在我国,电子商务人才基本上只有技术人才,而广大应用人才和管理人才几乎没有或很少.     

Australia, Give You Endless Possibilities as Imagination…

It's a place where the light changes everything. From the friendly attitude of its people, to the breathtaking blue of its skies and glistening gold of its sandy beaches. A place unlike any other, with animals and scenery you'll find nowhere else on earth and an unmatched diversity of fiavours, scents and sights. It is Australia, where the possibilities are only as endless as your imagination.     

Business Ethics Through Philosophy: Meditation,Teadings, Case Work

Business Ethics through philosophy includes threeelements: ethical thought, meaning meditation; ethicaldefinition, referring to philosophical readings;ethical values, in reference to case work in practicalethics. The purpose of this article is to show how businessethics can be conceived as an ethical vision,nourished and integrated around a philosophicalviewpoint.Three kinds of meditation are helpful in teachingbusiness ethics: nondiscursive meditation (part one),semidiscursive meditation (part two), and discursivemeditation (part three).The second and third elements of a philosophy ofbusiness, namely, readings and case work, areconnected with each form of meditation. There are fivephilosophical perspectives on business ethics: aFriedmanite ``The Business of Business is Business'Perspective, an (Industrial) Democracy Perspective, an(Eco) Systems Perspective, a Virtues Perspective, anda Western Christian Theological Perspective. Thereadings on the Friedmanite and Democracy perspectivesare connected to nondiscursive meditation. Readings onecosystems are illustrated in connection withsemidiscursive meditation. The Virtues and WesternChristian Theological perspectives are taken up inconnection with discursive meditation. The practicalcases are introduced with each philosophicalperspective.