Recovering Religion's Prophetic Voice for Business Ethics

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.     

The Struggle Against Sweatshops: Moving Toward Responsible Global Business

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. * A summer research grant from the Frank G. Zarb School of Business at Hofstra University contributed toward making this research possible. Tara J. Radin is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department at the Wharton School and Assistant Director of The American College Center for Ethics in Financial Services. She earned a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. in Management from the Darden School at the University of Virginia. Her research encompasses topics such as employment, global labor practices, technology, privacy, corporate governance, and stakeholder theory, and includes publications in journals such as Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, and American Business Law Journal. She is also co-author of Employment and Employee Rights, published by Blackwell Publishers, Ltd. Martin Calkins is Assistant Professor in the College of Management at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He earned a Ph.D. in management from the University of Virginia, M.Div. and Th.M. degrees in theology from the Weston School of Theology, and an M.I.M. in international management from the American Graduate School of International Management. His academic interests include moral theory (in particular, casuistry and virtue theory) as well as contemporary international business issues such as international codes, whistleblowing, sweatshops, and the impact of computer and Internet technologies on societies.     

The Political Economy of Medical Marijuana Laws Revisited

Atlantic Economic Journal -     

Who's Who in Business Ethics: A Profile of Richard T. De George

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.     

King Car and the Ethics of Automobile Proponents’ Strategies in China

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.     

Comparaisons de divers types de programmes de stabilisation des revenus agricoles du Québec

Deux modèles de programmation mathématique (MOTAD–cible statique et MOTAD-cible dynamique) ont été utilisés pour analyser l'impact de trois différents programmes d'intervention gouvernementale sur l'allocation optimale des ressources et sur les revenus totaux d'une ferme représentative au Québec. Les résultats montrent que sous les scénarios ASRA/ASREC et RARB, les revenus espérés sont supérieurs pour le RARB comparativement à ASRA/ASREC à un bas niveau de risque, mais ils sont du même ordre lorsqu'on considère les niveaux de risque plus élevés. L'allocation des ressources et la taille de la ferme sont quelque peu différentes. Afin de comparer ces deux programmes d'intervention, deux ratios ont été calculés : les dépenses nettes des gouvernements par rapport au revenu brut et au revenu net de l'entreprise. Les résultats montrent qu'un programme de type RARB est supérieur à un programme de type ASRA/ASREC, et ce, même si les transferts par unité assurée sont les mêmes. Sous le scénario CSRN, les résultats indiquent que les fermes ont des tailles de deux à quatre fois plus petites que dans les scénarios ASRA/ASREC ou RARB et que la stratégie financière des dépôts et des retraits dans le compte CSRN est déterminante dans l'augmentation du revenu espéré de la ferme.     

Why development fails: The evaluation gap in Nepal's subsistence agriculture

The rationality of farmer decision-making within traditional environments is widely accepted. This paper introduces a conceptual model for delineating interactions among income, employment and nutrition that explain in large part the living standards in a developing agricultural economy. Given farmer rationality, any development effort requires intervention to remove barriers among these components of the standard of living. A case study of Nepal shows that promotion of horticultural crops and government investment in infrastructure and education could dramatically improve living standards even under traditional agricultural production technology. However, the government did not correctly identify barriers to the long-run realization of these goals until recently. The study concludes that the rationality of government programmes themselves must be subjected to additional scrutiny.