I am a 53 year old teacher. I have double major in Speech and Criminal Justice resulting in a Bachelor's degree from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and a law degree.
I was appalled to hear that some chapters of the cancer-fighting organizations bearing Gilda Radner’s name have elected to drop her identity from their organizations. This decision might be understandable if this were the early Twentieth Century but we live in the age of You Tube when evidence of Radner’s comic genius lives on. Surely the organizations can present clips, pictures and writings from this artist?
Is this an ethical issue? It’s borderline. The organizations have every right to name themselves as they wish. In a Friedmanesque world, to model themselves on businesses seeking the highest possible profits.
But there is also the fact that many of these charitable efforts would not exist except against the backdrop of Gilda Radner’s tragic death from cancer.
Personally, I hold to the romantic belief that we live on as long as others speak our name. It would trouble me that we forget Gilda so soon.
James Pilant
What do you mean, you don’t know who Gilda Radner is? – Salon.com
From the article:
On-screen, Gilda Radner was fearless. The force of talent that brought to life such characters as Roseanne Roseannadanna, Lisa Loopner, Emily Litella, Baba Wawa and Candy Slice was incandescent. It was the broadness and boldness of Gilda’s work that made her, immediately, a bigger star than the other two women in “SNL’s” original cast, Laraine Newman and Jane Curtin. Jane was more cerebral and restrained, and it wasn’t until later seasons that the show’s writers began to recognize and exploit the depth of her talent. Laraine consciously decided to make her mark as “the sexy one,” and in many sketches she was sexy indeed. What she didn’t have was Gilda’s effusive personality, and that kept her from establishing the bond with audiences that Gilda seemed so effortlessly to achieve. As longtime “SNL” writer Jim Downey put it, “Sex bombs are never going to compete with people who want to be loved.”
See if you can find all the ethical questions in the film!
People Will Talk = Click this link and you can buy it at Amazon.com for (currently) $11.97 new or $4.95 used.
Cary Grant and Business Ethics
People Will Talk is a great film for teaching. The story of an eccentric doctor played by Cary Grant who has an even more eccentric friend offers many ethical conundrums. Jeanne Crain is the love interest in the film. During the first half, she is troubled and a largely passive character. I was waiting for my intrepid students to call me out on this, since I am a vigorous supporter of powerful women characters but somehow they missed this. When she became a more vibrant and powerful character in the second half, I would’ve been justified but my prepared defense was unnecessary.
Should a doctor disclose all pertinent facts to a patient? Professional Ethics
Is concealing your qualifications immoral?Professional Ethics – Business Ethics
Is using any means including those outside the current science to heal moral or immoral? Professional Ethics – Business Ethics
Is the comfort of patients more important than the calls of procedure and timeliness on the part of the nursing staff?
What attitude should be taken toward unmarried mothers? Ethics
Is attempting to dig up the dirt on a colleague immoral? Professional Ethics – Business Ethics
Is living off of your relatives wrong all the time? or is it wrong depending on the circumstances?Ethics
At what point is a crime “paid for?” Ethics
MY PARTICULAR Points –
Can a kiss equal a marriage proposal? (A good proportion of my class says no. I differ.) A matter of curiosity
Is a story more effective as persuasion or a presentation of facts? (Bet you have that one figured out.) A matter of what I believe – the class tends to go along with me.
Does a movie (especially a good one) explain a moral problem more clearly than a lecture (although they get a brief one anyway!)?
I observe my classes carefully and I use some of the same films each year. But I experiment with new ones each year as well. This was a new one. It was a great success. The class was delighted with it and paid careful attention. Their assignment was to write down all the moral conundrums they observed. We are going to discuss them tomorrow.
International Joint Statement | International Student Movement
International Joint Statement
Around the world over the past decade students, pupils, teachers, parents and employees have been protesting against the increasing commercialization and privatization of public education, and fighting for free and emancipatory education.
Many of us use the International Student Movement as a self-managed platform initiated to exchange information, to network and to co-ordinate protests at both the international and the global levels. Since the ISM platform was initiated in November 2008 various global days and weeks of action were coordinated.
We strive for structures based on direct participation and non-hierarchical organization through collective discussion and action. Anyone who identifies with the struggle against the privatization of public education, and for free and emancipatory education can join and participate on as well as shape the platform!
The following aims unite us worldwide:
What are we struggling against?
The effects of the current economic system on people and education systems:
→ tuition fees or any form of fees which exclude people from accessing and equally participating in education
→ student debt
→ public education aligned to serve the (labour) market;
► The so called Bologna-Process (as with its counterparts around the world) is aimed at implementing education systems that primarily train people in skills serving the labour market. It promotes the reduction of costs for training a person, shortens the length of time spent studying, and produces underqualified workforces.
→ turning education into a commodity as part of the commodification of all aspects of life
→ the significant and increasing influence of business interests on basic budgets for public education
→ the significant and increasing budget cuts on public education worldwide
→ the privatisation of public funds through the subsidisation of private educational institutions
→ the commodification and exploitation of labor within educational institutions
We stand against discrimination and exclusion within any educational institution based on:
→ socio-economic background, for instance by charging fees so that people with less money can’t participate equally
→ nationality
→ performance and academic record
→ political ideologies and activities
→ gender
→ sexual orientation
→ religion
→ ethnic background
→ skin colour
We stand against the prioritisation of research towards commercially valuable patents rather than open knowledge freely available to all
→ Public educational institutions are increasingly forced to compete for private sponsorships to do (basic) research; at the same time private funds tend to be invested into research promising to be profitable, leading to a decline in funding for areas of research which may be important but not deemed economically lucrative. Educational institutions and participants are evaluated on the basis of economic profitability and often compete to receive additional public funding based on this criteria.
We stand against the prioritisation of income-generating research grants ahead of education and basic research
Activities for the army within educational institutions:
→ no research specifically for military purposes
→ no recruiting and advertising activities for the army
What are we struggling for?
CONTENT:
→ free and emancipatory education as a human right. Education should primarily work for the emancipation of the individual, which means: being enabled to critically reflect and understand the power structures and environment surrounding him-/herself. Education must not only enable the emancipation of the individual but society as a whole
→ education as a public good serving public interests
→ academic freedom and choice: freedom to pursue any educational discipline
ACCESS:
→ free from monetary mechanisms of payment by participants and any kind of discrimination and exclusion and therefore freely accessible to all individuals
→ sufficient funding for all public educational institutions, whether they are deemed profitable or not
STRUCTURE:
→ all educational entities/institutions should be democratically structured, meaning direct participation from below as a basis for decision making processes
Why on the local and global level?
The impacts of the current global economic system create struggles worldwide. While applying local pressure to influence our individual local/regional politics and legislation, we must always be aware of the global and structural nature of our problems and learn from each other’s tactics, experiences in organizing, and theoretical knowledge. Short-term changes may be achieved on the local level, but great change will only happen if we unite globally.
Education systems worldwide do what they are intended to do within the economic and state system(s): select for, train and create ignorance and submission. We unite for a different education system and a different life.
We stand united against any sort of repression by governments worldwide directed at people involved in the struggle for free and emancipatory education.
The following groups and individuals support this statement, pledge to spread it, and to get actively involved in efforts to network and unite education activist groups worldwide in the future.
Wish to support this statement by having your (group) name listed below? Just send an e-mail to: united.for.education@gmail.com
Students around the world have many common interests. In many nations, austerity policies are damaging the social fabric including education. That kind of investment in a nation’s future is the last place one should look for broad cuts.
I have watched in horror as our college students are priced out of many educational options, saddled with enormous debts when they do go to college and in a poorly regulated market are often overcharged for degrees with little use.
I believe that education is the bedrock value for a civilized society with a view toward future generations. We must look to our children’s future.
Financing education on the backs of our students is an American innovation. We transfer what used to be a common burden, a common investment, into personal debt. It is a national tragedy.
But also we see a constant drumbeat for an education suited only for the job market. That is only one element of the educational process. We who teach are also in the business of creating critical thinkers, good citizens and human beings who can live full lives with an appreciation of art, culture and history.
In 1841, European student went to the barricades and fought for a more just society. Ever since students have been in the forefront of challenging society to live up to its highest values.
I believe in the future. I believe in it not because of the continuing horror of American politics but because I teach students that I believe in, that I have faith in, and that I am willing to trust the future of this nation with.
Lance Armstrong doping: How the cyclist is like Lehman Bros. – Slate Magazine
Many of us instinctively presume that cheating creates a level playing field. In fact, it does precisely the reverse. Widespread cheating rewards the few who have the best information, the most money, and the highest risk tolerance. In this world, Armstrong and his team ruled: Armstrong spent more than $1 million maintaining his exclusive relationship with Dr. Michele Ferrari, regarded as the sport’s best doping doctor. Armstrong used his private jet to transport drugs, and he cultivated a friendly working relationship with the sport’s governing body that, according to the USADA report, may have helped him evade sanction for a suspicious drug test in 2001. Armstrong also had an entrepreneurial attitude toward risk, hiring his gardener to follow the 1999 Tour de France on a motorcycle and deliver EPO.
While a few intrepid journalists were farsighted enough to cast doubt on the validity of Armstrong and Postal’s dominant performances, most were content to focus on the myth-like story they witnessed on the road each July. Only in 2010, when the federal government and USADA began their respective investigations, did the truth begin to emerge. Thanks to investigators and the riders who have stepped forward, cycling now faces its watershed moment: an opportunity to build a culture of meaningful regulation, accountability, and to ensure a clean sport for future generations.
The Armstrong era happened because doping worked so powerfully and lucratively that no one—not riders, not cycling’s governing body, not the media—was willing to stop it. It was a time of hollow magic. It helped create kings and heroes that were too big to fail.
The article goes on to point out the similarities between cycling corruption and that in the investment firms of the 2007-8.
I have been telling my class that many of the stories we find in the media are negative business ethics stories, success stories where individuals have made enormous sums of money by flouting the rules or subverting the purposes of the government to gain a competitive advantage. These are stories that make a mockery of following the rules, doing the right thing or simply obeying the law.
How do you teach business ethics when you compete with a “win at any cost” culture? In a society where the worship of the “long green” seems to have supplanted much of Christianity, it is hard to argue for the intrinsic benefits of living the virtuous life.
The good fight is worth fighting but the media ethos is a detriment to that fight and to a continuing fidelity to right and truth.
Foxconn says underage workers used in China plant | Reuters
Foxconn, the trading name of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, said it had found some interns at a plant in Yantai, in northeastern Shandong province, were under the legal working age of 16. It did not say how many were underage.
“Our investigation has shown that the interns in question, who ranged in age from 14 to 16, had worked in that campus for approximately three weeks,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.
“This is not only a violation of China’s labor law, it is also a violation of Foxconn policy and immediate steps have been taken to return the interns in question to their educational institutions.”
China’s official Xinhua news agency, citing an unnamed Yantai government official, said that 56 underage interns would be brought back to their schools.
The students had been employed after Foxconn asked the development zone in which the factory is located to help solve a labor shortage last month, when they were needed to make up a shortfall of 19,000 workers, Xinhua added.
Foxconn is Apple Inc’s largest manufacturing partner, and also makes products for Dell Inc, Sony Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co among its other clients. It said the Yantai plant does not make Apple products.
Underage workers in the corporate heaven of Foxconn
There is the funny thing in economics called supply and demand. It would seem to dictate that you raise pay or benefits to attract new workers. But Foxconn doesn’t believe in the free market. They appealed to the government (that would be the development zone) for a little help in the form of permission to use 56 underage “interns.” They took them out of school, an undoubted benefit. I mean, who needs school when they could work long hours at tedious jobs for little pay. There is certainly a kind of education there, right?
I could talk about the business ethics of this situation. But how much analysis can you do? Underage workers, children used to evade having to raise salaries, manipulating the government for private gain – what part of this requires an extended analysis?
I watch military documentaries (and every other kind) with some regularity. Some are terrible. This one is one of the best I’ve seen. Its analysis of the factors that contributed to survival in combat is excellent. I was impressed by the commentary and the eyewitness accounts. I wish they had been able to do a more thorough examination of the role of close naval bombardment in aiding the assault on Omaha beach but that is essentially a quibble considering the theme of the documentary, survival. D-Day naval support deserves its own film.
I watch military documentaries (and every other kind) with some regularity. Some are terrible. This one is one of the best I’ve seen. Its analysis of the factors that contributed to survival in combat is excellent. I was impressed by the commentary and the eyewitness accounts. I wish they had been able to do a more thorough examination of the role of close naval bombardment in aiding the assault on Omaha beach but that is essentially a quibble considering the theme of the documentary, survival. D-Day naval support deserves its own film.
The Virginia planters were prone to leave the care of their estates too much to their overseers, and to think personal labor a degradation. Washington carried into his rural affairs the same method, activity, and circumspection that had distinguished him in military life. He kept his own accounts, posted up his books and balanced them with mercantile exactness. We have examined them as well as his diaries recording his daily occupations, and his letter-books, containing entries of shipments of tobacco, and correspondence with his London agents. They are monuments of his business habits. [Footnote: The following letter of Washington to his London correspondents will give an idea of the early intercourse of the Virginia planters with the mother country.
“Our goods by the Liberty, Capt. Walker, came to hand in good order and soon after his arrival, as they generally do when shipped in a vessel to this river [the Potomac], and scarce ever when they go to any others; for it don’t often happen that a vessel bound to one river has goods of any consequence to another; and the masters, in these cases, keep the packages till an accidental conveyance offers, and for want of better opportunities frequently commit them to boatmen who care very little for the goods so they get their freight, and often land them wherever it suits their convenience, not where they have engaged to do so. … A ship from London to Virginia may be in Rappahannock or any of the other rivers three months before I know any thing of their arrival, and may make twenty voyages without my seeing or even hearing of the captain.”]
The products of his estate also became so noted for the faithfulness, as to quality and quantity, with which they were put up, that it is said any barrel of flour that bore the brand of George Washington, Mount Vernon, was exempted from the customary inspection in the West India ports. [Footnote: Speech of the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop on laying the corner-stone of Washington’s Monument.]
Washington practiced good business ethics by keeping his own accounts and maintaining a reputation for accuracy and competence.
Our fighting men in Afghanistan still need books today – please contribute.
Battle Of The Bulge | Generals At War | Battlefield Documentary – YouTube
A good documentary, not great, but good.
I have always found the Battle of the Bulge one of the more interesting of the battles fought in the 20th century. An overconfident American army attacked and driven back in disorder, then rallies and drives the Germans back to their start lines in about thirty days. The Germans expend their last reserves of men, tanks and supplies all in a doomed effort to reach Antwerp and split the English and American armies in two.
I didn’t really find out anything new. There was a demonstration of the shaped charge effect (bazookas and other hollow charged weapons) that was good. I thought the demonstration of the effect of the proximity fuse far less convincing. A casual watcher would not have realized what a dramatic change this made in warfare.
The documentary was too kind to General Montgomery. Now, you could argue that the film said very little about him. That’s my problem. Montgomery’s conduct after the battle in which he explained how he saved the American army should make him a target of ridicule, and I didn’t see that and wanted to.
Our fighting men in Afghanistan still need books today – please contribute.
Battle Of The Bulge | Generals At War | Battlefield Documentary – YouTube
A good documentary, not great, but good.
I have always found the Battle of the Bulge one of the more interesting of the battles fought in the 20th century. An overconfident American army attacked and driven back in disorder, then rallies and drives the Germans back to their start lines in about thirty days. The Germans expend their last reserves of men, tanks and supplies all in a doomed effort to reach Antwerp and split the English and American armies in two.
I didn’t really find out anything new. There was a demonstration of the shaped charge effect (bazookas and other hollow charged weapons) that was good. I thought the demonstration of the effect of the proximity fuse far less convincing. A casual watcher would not have realized what a dramatic change this made in warfare.
The documentary was too kind to General Montgomery. Now, you could argue that the film said very little about him. That’s my problem. Montgomery’s conduct after the battle in which he explained how he saved the American army should make him a target of ridicule, and I didn’t see that and wanted to.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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