Bribery,consent and prima facie duty: A rejoinder to Carson

Responding to my paper Bribery Tom Carson argues that bribe takers violate promisory obligations in a wider range of cases than I acknowledge and insists that bribe taking is prima facie wrong in all contexts. I argue that he is wrong on both counts. Michael Philips is a Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University. Recent papers by him have appeared in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophical Studies, Nous, Law and Philosophy, The Journal of Business Ethics, and several other journals. He is currently at work an a book in moral theory.     

Corporate responsibility and corporate personhood

In this paper, I consider the claim that a corporation cannot be held to be morally responsible unless it is a person. First, I argue that this claim is ambigious. Person flags three different but related notions: metaphysical person, moral agent, moral person. I argue that, though one can make the claim that corporates are metaphysical persons, this claim is only marginally relevant to the question of corporate moral responsibility. The central question which must be answered in discussions of corporate moral responsibility is whether corporations are moral agents or moral persons. I argue that, though we can make a case for saying corporations are moral agents, they are not moral persons, and hence, we can hold them responsible. In addition, we need not treat them the way we would be obligated to treat a moral person; we needn't have the same scruples about holding a corporation morally responsible as we would a moral person. Rita C. Manning is Lecturer at California State College, San Bernardino. She has published in Southern Journal of Philosophy and in Informal Logic.     

Risk Management for E-Cash Systems with Partial Real-Time Audit

We analyze coin-wallet and balance-wallet under partial real-time audit, and compute upper bounds on theft due to the fact that not all the transactions are audited in real time, assuming that everything else is perfect. In particular, we assume that the audit regime holds for innocent payees. Let v be the maximum allowed balance in a wallet, and 01 be the fraction of transactions that are audited in real time in an audit round. Assume one unit transactions. We show that the upper bound on expected theft for coin-wallet is lim₀^–2, while for plausible (similar) parameter choice the bound for a balance-wallet is O(exp(mv)), where 1<m. The former is nicely bounded for small transactions, however, the bound for balance-wallet can become huge in those cases where we require very small false alarm probability. We conclude that partial audit, may be suitable for coin-wallets with low denomination coins, and possibly for balance-wallet, when we may tolerate a relatively high false alarm rate, but it may be too risky for balance-wallet, where very low false alarm rate is required.     

Corporate democracy and the rights of shareholders

Some have argued that because of weaknesses in corporate democracy, there is widespread abuse of shareholders' rights in American securities markets. I describe a number of horror stories that shareholders might tell to support this claim. Then I argue that despite appearances to the contrary, there is not widespread abuse of shareholders' rights in American securities markets. This is because (i) corporations, when doing things that look abusive, are generally violating neither the legal rights nor the charter rights of shareholders and (ii) shareholders — in their role as shareholders — have no other rights than these. William B. Irvine is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wright State University. He is the author of The Ethics of Investing, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 6, no. 3.     

Individual and organizational characteristics of women in managerial leadership

Women are making a substantial impact on the employment market, both in terms of overall numbers as well as by appointment to male-dominated organizational roles. Research on women in leadership positions within organizations has concentrated on two main foci. Firstly, the identification of relevant individual and organizational characteristics and secondly, on the impact of these variables on the women in management roles. This paper presents the findings from a series of studies in relation to these broad dimensions. Dr. Rowney was the chairperson of the Management of Organizations and Human Resources Area from 1978 to 1980 and until recently held the position of Associate Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies. During 1988 she was a Visiting Professor to the Jiatong University in Xi'an and to the Australian Management College in Mount Eliza, Victoria, Australia. Commencing in January 1990 she will be at the International Management Center in Budapest, Hungary. Consultative activities have included such organizations as the Alberta Wheat Pool, Alberta Gas Ethylene, Gulf Canada and Technology Systems International. Research papers have been published in numerous journals including the Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology, Canadian Personnel and Industrial Relations Journal, Canadian Psychological Review and Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science. Her more recent publications include A Comparison of Burnout Across Public/Private Sector Managers and The Relationships Between Risk Propensity, and Individual and Job Environment Variables, Journal of Health and Human Administration; and A Preliminary Investigation of Burnout Dimensions in Intact Work Groups, Proceedings XXIV International Congress of Psychology. Currently, Dr. Rowney is involved in a major cross-cultural study of the environmental context of management and personnel in several countries. This research is an extension of projects involving women in management, stress, burnout and the public/private sector. Dr. Rowney is also a registered O.D. consultant and member of the International Advisory Board of the O.D. Institute. Dr. Cahoon has published numerous articles in journals such as Academy of Management Review, Canadian Public Administration, Journal of Health and Human Resource Administration Organization Development Journal, Canadian Journal of Petroleum Technology, and Leadership and Organization Development Journal. He has served as a member of the National Executive of IPAC and on the editorial board of the International Journal of Public Administration. Dr. Cahoon was a member of the Directing Staff of the Australian Administrative Staff College in Mount Eliza, Victoria, Australia from September 1, 1986 to July 1987. Some of his more recent publications include the chapter Overcoming Resistance to Affirmative Action in R. Rentschler's, T. Tullock's and K. Cole's (Eds) Affirmative Action in Action: A Guide to Implementation, JPMA (Inc.), Melbourne, Australia, 1987; and the article Management Development: A Competency Based Approach, The Practicing Manager, Vol. 8, No. 3, April 1987. His conference papers include: The Interaction Between Worksite Variables and Personal Characteristics for Female Managers (with Julie Rowney, JIA), presented at the Third International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, Dublin, Ireland, July 1987; and The Challenge of Human Resource Management: Maximizing the Human Asset Potential, presented at the Annual Conference of the Victoria Council for Educational Administration, Melbourne, Australia, June 1987. He is currently involved in a longitudinal study on the status of women as managers, stress and burnout. He is completing a text on Public Management in Canada and looking at the organizational and human resource implications of downsizing.     

A General Problem Solving Approach for Wicked Problems: Theory and Application to Chemical Weapons Verification and Biological Terrorism

Wicked ill-defined problems such as violent crime, illegal drugs and terrorism may contain technical, economic, and political elements operating together as systems. Practical resolution requires simple solutions that are technically feasible, economically sustainable and politically implementable. Here we show an approach to achieve simple solutions to these problems. The approach was derived and tested in two experiments: first to develop verification measures for the Chemical Weapons Convention and subsequently to develop response concepts for biological terrorism. The approach's validity derives from its close relationship to the scientific method in objectively testing results, and its power is achieved by focusing a team of people directly on the problem of interest in the setting of a learning organization. The approach appears to provide access at will of the full human potential to resolve wicked problems and, thereby, yields a general problem solving tool of substantial power.     

The “Modified Vendetta Sanction” as a method of corporate-collective punishment

Shannon Shipp argues for the Modified Vendetta Sanction as a method of corporate-collective punishment. He claims that this sanction evades the difficulties of Peter French's Hester Prynne Sanction. In this paper I argue that, though the Modified Vendetta Sanction evades the problems that Shipp poses for it, it fails to evade some of the difficulties that I pose for French's method. Moreover, there are some difficulties that plague the Modified Vendetta Sanction which do not count against the Hester Prynne Sanction. Therefore, if my analysis holds, then Shipp's method neither improves significantly on the Hester Prynne Sanction nor is unproblematic in its own right. The significance of this paper is that it foils yet another attempt by some corporate punishment theorists to establish the plausibility of a method of corporate-collective punishment. J. Angelo Corlett has authored papers on ethics, social/political philosophy, history of philosophy, value theory, epistemology and metaphysics. His papers appear in such journals as the Public Affairs Quarterly, the Journal of Business Ethics, Business & Professional Ethics Journal, the American Psychologist, Idealistic Studies, the American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine. He is the editor of and contributor to two forthcoming books: Equality and Liberty: Analyzing Rawls and Nozick and Analyzing Marx: The Moral Assessment of Capitalist Exploitation.     

Merger Control in the New Economy

This paper addresses the potential for conflict between antitrust authorities in the arena of merger control in the new economy. By new economy we mean two related developments. First, the internationalization of the economy, i.e. the ability to sell and produce products world-wide, and secondly, markets with certain characteristics such as network effects and other aspects of natural monopoly. We focus on three types of substantive issues in merger control – market definition, assessment of competitive effects, and the role of remedies. We argue that the scope for conflict varies significantly across these three arenas. In particular, conflict over market definition is less likely. By contrast, the assessment of competitive effects and the role of remedies are areas where conflict between antitrust authorities may be more likely in new economy-type markets.     

The ethics of political marketing practices,the rhetorical perspective

Negative attack ads used in political compaigns have been attacked as being unethical because they contribute to voter cynicism and apathy and as being manipulative. From a rhetorical perspective these advertisements serve a positive societal function by creating alternative rhetorical visions that can contribute to the marketplace of ideas.Dr. Banker is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Department at Stonehill College in North Easton, Massachusetts. He has published articles in such journals asWorld Communication and theJournal of Educational Psychology. His primary research interest is in Political Communication.     

Affirmative action as a form of restitution

Though the common sense defense of affirmative action (or employment equity) appeals to principles of restitution, philosophers have tried to defend it in other ways. In contrast, I defend it by appealing to the notion of restitution, arguing (1) that alternative attempts to justify affirmative action fail; and (2) that ordinary affirmative action programs need to be supplemented and amended in keeping with the principles this suggests. Leo Groarke is associate professor of philosophy at Wilfrid Laurier University. His work has appeared in a number of scholarly journals, including Dialogue, Atlantis, The Public Affairs Quarterly, Teaching Philosophy and The Journal of the History of Philosophy. His books include Nuclear War: Philosophical Perspectives (1985) and Greek Scepticism (forthcoming from McGill-Queen's University Press).     

Friedman fallacies

Milton Friedman's article, The Social Responsibility of Business Is To Increase Its Profits, owes its appeal to the rhetorical devices of simplicity, authority, and finality. More careful consideration reveals oversimplification and ambiguity that conceals empirical errors and logical fallacies. It is false that business does, or would, operate exclusively in economic terms, that managers concentrate obsessively on profitability, and that ethics can be marginalized. These errors reflect basic contradictions: an apolitical political base, altruistic agents of selfishness, and good deriving from greed. Colin Grant is a Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Mount Allison University. He teaches an undergraduate course on The Ethics and Ethos of Business. His article Giving Ethics the Business appeared in JBE 7 (1988), pp. 489–495. Some of the journals in which he has published are: The Christian Century, The Dalhousie Review, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Modern Theology, Religious Studies, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, The Toronto Journal of Theology.     

Tobacco advertising and children: The limits of first amendment protection

A recent wave of public interest surrounding the alleged advertising of cigarettes to children has raised First Amendment issues under the commercial speech doctrine. The two most vocal sides of this debate are sharply divided over the amount of constitutional protection that should be offered to tobacco advertisers. Proponents of restrictions on such ads argue that commercial speech does not advance any ideas worth preserving and is consequently deserving of less protection than other forms of speech. Their opponents assert that commercial speech should be offered wide protection because of its role in contributing to individual autonomy in the marketplace of ideas through informing consumer choice. While I believe that commercial speech should be offered broad protection, I will argue that severe restrictions are morally justifiable and legally defensible when it comes to advertising to children, particularly with respect to harmful products. Since the free market of ideas model is premised upon a notion that there are reasonable consumers that can discern falsehood from truth, this model is invalidated when it comes to children since they cannot be expected to possess the same capacity for judgment as adults. Kenman L. Wong is a Ph.D. candidate in Social Ethics at the University of Southern California. He teaches Business Ethics at Biola University and is currently co-editing (with Scott B. Rae) Business Ethics: A Judeo-Christian Approach to be published by Zondervan Publishing House (A division of HarperCollins Publishers) in 1996.     

Beyond bean counting: Establishing high ethical standards in the public accounting profession

Business professions are increasingly faced with the question of how to best monitor the ethical behavior of their members. Conflicts could exist between a profession's desire to self-regulate and its accountability to the public at large. This study examines how members of one profession, public accounting, evaluate the relative effectiveness of various self-regulatory and externally imposed mechanisms for promoting a climate of high ethical behavior. Specifically, the roles of independent public accountants, regulatory and rule setting agencies, and undergraduate accounting education are investigated. Of 461 possible respondents, 230 questionnaires (a 49.6% response rate) indicated that the profession's own rule setting body (The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) and the use of peer review were perceived as the most effective mechanisms, while government regulation was ranked least. Respondents also evaluated the extent to which ethics should be covered in the accounting curriculum. For every course, the CPAs believed a greater emphasis on ethics is appropriate than presently exists. Suggestions for more effectively integrating ethics into accounting courses are made. Finally, respondents were also asked whether in answering the questionnaire they used a definition of ethics as either the Professional Code of Conduct or a moral and philosphical framework for guiding beliefs. Those who viewed ethics as abiding by a professional code had more confidence in the mechanisms addressed in this study to aid the public accounting profession's ability to ensure high ethical standards of conduct. Methodological implications of this distinction for future studies in business ethics are discussed. Jeffrey R. Cohen is Assistant Professor of Accounting at Boston College. He received his Ph.D. from The University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is a C.M.A. and a Peat Marwick Research Fellow. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Accounting Research, Decision Sciences and The Organizational Behavior Teaching Review. His work on Ethics has appeared in Issues in Accounting Education, Management Accounting, and The CPA Journal. Laurie W. Pant is Assistant Professor of Accounting at Boston College. She holds an M.B.A. and a D.B.A. from Boston University and an M.Ed. from Emory University. She serves on the editorial board of Issues in Accounting Education. Her articles on Ethics have appeared in Issues in Accounting Education, Management Accounting and The Organizational Behavior Teaching Review.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1989 American Accounting Association National Meeting.     

Unredistributable corporate moral responsibility

Certain cases of corporate action seem especially resistant to a shared moral evaluation. Conservatives may argue that if bad intentions cannot be demonstrated, corporations and their managers are not blame-worthy, while liberals may insist that the results of corporate actions were predictable and so somebody must be to blame. Against this background, the theory that sometimes a corporation's moral responsibility cannot be redistributed, even in principle, to the individuals involved, seems quite attractive.This doctrine of unredistributable corporate moral responsibility (UCMR) is, however, ultimately indefensible. I show this in several steps. After first locating UCMR in the context of the evolving debate about corporate moral agency, the paper reexamines cases cited in defense of UCMR and takes up the attempt to defend it by identifying corporate moral agency with corporate practices. A further section explores the claim that UCMR is a convention distinct from, yet compatible with, traditional natural notions of responsibility. The final section develops a notion of combined akratic agency to provide an alternate explanation, compatible with rejection of UCMR, of the phenomena which make the doctrine attractive. Jan Edward Garrett is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Kentucky University, with major interests in business ethics, the metaphysics of social organizations, and ancient philosophy. He has published on Aristotle's conception of techne (craft) in The Modern Schoolman (1987) and his article Persons, Kinds and Corporations: An Aristotelian View has appeared in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. He attended Peter French's NEH Summer Seminar on Corporate Responsibility in 1983.     

Where Did They Go Wrong? An Analysis of the Failure of Knowledgeable Internet Consumers to Detect Deception Over the Internet

This paper uses an information-processing model of deception detection to understand the reasons underlying Internet consumers' success and failure at detecting forms of intentional deception that occur on the Internet. Eighty MBA students visited either a real commercial site or a deceptive copycat (page-jacking) site. The deceptive site was identical to the clean site except that it contained six deceptive manipulations (e.g., forged favorable quotes from authoritative sources). This study compares the information processing behavior of four groups of subjects: those who detected the deception, those who missed it, those who correctly identified the real site as non-deceptive, and those who incorrectly believed that the real site was deceptive. It was found that (1) priming subjects to generate the hypothesis of deception weakly facilitates detection success, (2) competence at evaluating the hypothesis of deception is a strong differentiator between successful and unsuccessful detectors, and (3) successful detectors rely on assurance cues and heavily discount trust cues. Unsuccessful detectors do the opposite.     

The evolution of manufacturing technology and its impact on industrial structure: An international study

This paper shows that plant and firm size in manufacturing, and especially in engineering industry, in several Western industrial countries has declined since the early 1970s. Two hypotheses explaining the decline are advanced. One is de-glomeration or specialization: the divestiture of non-core businesses in order to free up scarce resources (particularly management time) to defend and nurture core business activities. The second hypothesis is that the emergence of new computer-based technology has improved the quality and productivity of small and medium scale production relative to standardized mass-production techniques which dominated previously.     

The economics of open source software for a competitive firm

Large quantities of software, ranging from operating systems to web servers to games, are now available as open source software or free software. In many cases, this software is backed by large profit seeking corporations such as IBM. Traditional economic analysis is used to identify the costs and benefits to firms of using open source rather than proprietary solutions, particularly in the case of the firm releasing code to the world when not obliged to do so. Examples of large companies backing open source are examined in light of the profit motive. Additionally, open source is also analyzed as a quasi-public good.     

Common knowledge of the second kind

Although most of us know that human beings cannot and should not be replaced by computers, we have great difficulties saying why this is so. This paradox is largely the result of institutionalizing several fundamental misconceptions as to the nature of both trustworthy objective and moral knowledge. Unless we transcend this paradox, we run the increasing risks of becoming very good at counting without being able to say what is worth counting and why. The degree to which this is occurring is the degree to which the computer revolution is already over — and the degree to which we human beings have lost.I think that Aristotle was profoundly right in holding that ethics is concerned with how to live and with human happiness, and also profoundly right in holding that this sort of knowledge (practical knowledge) is different from theoretical knowledge. A view of knowledge that acknowledges that the sphere of knowledge is wider than the sphere of science seems to me to be a cultural necessity if we are to arrive at a sane and human view of ourselves or of science. (Hilary Putnam, Meaning and the Moral Sciences, 1981) David A. Bella is Professor of Civil Engineering at the College of Engineering at Oregon State University. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Virginia Military Institute (1961), his M.S. and his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from New York University. His primary research interest is in the philosophy and sociology of technology, technological impact assessment, and moral philosophy. His most important publications are Engineering and Erosion of Trust and Organizations and Systemic Distortion of Information, Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering (1987), and Strategic Defense: Catastrophic Loss of Control, Journal of Peace Research (1989). Jonathan B. King is Associate Professor of Management at the College of Business at Oregon State University. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Antioch College (1965) and his M.B.A. in Finance (1975) and Ph.D. in Business, Government and Society (1980) from the University of Washington. His primary research interests are in the areas of moral philosophy, the philosophy of science, and critical thinking. His most important publications are The Three Face of Thinking, Journal of Higher Education (1986), Prisoner's Paradoxes, Journal of Business Ethics (1988), and Confronting Chaos, Journal of Business Ethics (1989).     

Consumers and the internal market for services: Shortcomings of the “new approach” of the Community

The paper discusses the new approach of the Community in the area of services, namely the principle that every service — like every good — should be allowed to circulate freely in the entire Internal Market provided it meets the standards of EEC law and of the country of origin. There are some exceptions to this principle, especially in the insurance area (market segregation in the industry's interest). The paper points out that the new approach might endanger consumer protection of Member States unless adequate standards of the receiving country exist. ECLG makes a number of suggestions to overcome the lacunae left by the new approach, especially by opting for minimal harmonisation, by applying rules of private internal law under the Rome Convention, and by providing for safeguard clauses.

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Verbraucher und Binnenmarkt für Dienstleistungen: Mängel der sog. neuen Konzeption der Gemeinschaft

Zusammenfassung Die Gemeinschaft versucht in Vewirklichung der Grundfreiheiten des durch die Einheitliche Akte geänderten EWG-Vertrages die Vollendung des Binnenmarktes auch im Dienstleistungsbereich. Dabei sind unterschiedliche Herangehensweisen denkbar, nämlich das Prinzip der Minimalharmonisierung, die Marktsegmentierung oder die sog. neue Konzeption. Letztere findet sich vor allem im Banken- und Rundfunkbereich; dancah soll es für den Marktzutritt im gesamten Binnenmarkt ausreichen, daß die (angeglichenen) Standards des Ursprungslandes eingehalten werden. Die ECLG befürchtet einen Abbau des Verbraucherschutzes bei einer konsequenten Durchführung dieses Prinzips und macht Gegenvorschläge. Diese beziehen sich auf eine verstärkte Durchsetzung des Prinzips der Minimalharmonisierung, auf die Notwendigkeit der Anwendung der Regeln des Internationalen Privatrechts nach dem Römischen Schuldrechtsübereinkommen von 1980, und durch Verankerung von Schutzklauseln.

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The European Consumer Law Group (ECLG) is a group of lawyers and law scholars in the EEC and EFTA countries, concerned with legal aspects of consumer protection. Correspondence regarding the paper should be directed to: Professor Norbert Reich, Centre for European Legal Policy, Universitätsallee GW 1, D-2800 Bremen 33, Federal Republic of Germany.     

An Exercise in Moral Philosophy: Seeking to Understand “nobody”

The late Hannah Arendt proposed that many, perhaps most monstrous deeds are not committed by moral monsters but by individuals who do not think. However, understanding the significance of activity of thinking as such requires a moral philosophy that transcends rational actor assumptions and instrumental reason centering, instead, on the conditions of self-knowledge. The ubiquitous and often lethal phenomenon of information distortions provides a vehicle for expanding our understandings of individual moral response-abilities in our modern times.