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.
Science documents discrimination against women in science « Kay Steiger
This means men were deemed more qualified and competent in a science setting, even if women were making the judgement. Study participants also dramatically increased the recommended salary for men. The researchers concluded, “These results suggest that interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of increasing the participation of women in science.”
The problem of increasing women in the sciences has been a long and highly contested one. Lots point to conflicts between family and work, but this study seems to say that there are still underlying biases based simply on perception of gender, regardless of whether that person has children.
Discrimination against women should be gone by now.
Discrimination against women, even by other women in the sciences, continues. It is a very sad thing. It has been several hundred years of struggle for women to rise above the status of cattle. This is evidence that the struggle has years to go and its success is by no means guaranteed.
There is much that remains to be done. Let us carry the struggle forward with confidence in the inherent goodness of humanity and faith in the future.
The Radical Rich: Moving From Romney to Re-Occupy | OurFuture.org
David Frum, a conservative and former George W. Bush speechwriter, gets it. Frum writes that “what makes it all both so heart-rending and so outrageous is that all this is occurring at a time when economically disadvantaged Americans have never been so demoralized and passive, never exerted less political clout. No Coxey’s army is marching on Washington, no sit-down strikes are paralyzing factories, no squatters are moving onto farmer’s fields.”
Beautifully said. Frum’s batting average dips slightly as he continues: “Occupy Wall Street immediately fizzled, there is no protest party of the political left.”
Occupy didn’t “fizzle.” It attracted massive support almost overnight. Within weeks it had dramatically transformed the national conversation. Democrats from the president on down were forced to address issues of economic injustice, at least rhetorically, instead of negotiating destructive (and pro-wealthy) austerity deals with the Republican counterparts.
But the powers arrayed against Occupy – in the media, in politics, and elsewhere – combined with the winter winds to force it into hibernation.
Frum’s absolutely right, however, when he says there’s “no protest party of the political left” – although I’d drop the word “protest” and make it simply a party, one that can win rather than just siphon off votes. That won’t happen without a mass movement.
That’s why it’s time to re-Occupy our country. In fact, maybe it should’ve been called “Re-Occupy” all along. It was, and it remains, a re-occupation – of our privatized public spaces and our privatized political discourse. Occupy, or something like it, is the only force that has a chance against the power of the Radical Rich.
Occupy Wall Street isn’t dead. Is it morphing into something new, Re-occupy Wall Street? What that is, I am not able to clearly define. No one can. A collection of individuals determined not to be co-opted by the existing political parties is bound to seek an independent course.
I like this piece by Richard (RJ) Eskow. I have seen it quoted many times in the blogs I read but I am using a part seldom quoted. I have spoken to wealthy individuals on a few occasions and Eskow is quite right, they are enraged at a nation in which their money goes to support the “entitled.” They go to enormous lengths to remain uninformed and their resentment can even fall on their employees (and the occasional waitress.) They burn with disgust at how others are not like them. They see themselves as virtuous, hard working and vital to the nation. The others they see as parasites. Whether or not, they follow Ayn Rand, they have the John Galt thing down perfectly.
This is a pretty incredible amount of hubris. The Classical Greeks would have been appalled. I am appalled. To whom so much has been given and so little asked, there is so little perception of being fortunate just persecuted.
Whether justice in this matter will be settled in this world or the next, is not something I am given to know.
Are Ethics Courses Failing to Produce Ethical Business People? – Ethics Sage
The bottom line is there is no way of knowing whether business ethics education has made a difference. A graduate of a prestigious school might commit fraud in the future, but it doesn’t mean business ethics has failed them or even all students. Organizational pressures and the culture of a firm can create barriers to ethical behavior. The key is to find a way to work through the obstacles and voice your values.
I’m asked all the time why I teach ethics and am challenged whether it is even possible to change one’s ethics by a college course. After all, some argue, ethics is formed at a very early age. I don’t dispute that but do point out that my goal is to get students to reflect on their actions in a safe setting so they can better develop the tools to deal with ethical challenges in the workplace. I am not a guarantor of ethical action.
Teaching ethics should not rely on having one college course in business ethics and that is it. I see the failure of business ethics education to be one of not integrating ethics into each course and each decision in business. When colleges rely on one course to teach ethics, they are not sending the message that ethics counts. If they cover it in all courses and in the context of functional courses, then they send a completely opposite signal that it is an important part of every business decision.
I can teach business ethics – I know it from past experiences including grading papers, exams, and student presentations and papers on the topics. What I don’t know is whether students will really learn the lesson. Similarly, I can teach Intermediate Accounting to my students but I don’t know if they have truly learned the material and will be successful on the CPA Exam or in their accounting careers.
There is old African proverb: “It takes a village to raise a child”. It is quite appropriate to say that it takes an organization to raise an ethical employee.
(I should mention that a great deal of this posting dealt with the “Giving Voice to Values” curriculum and the work of Mary C. Gentile. I have visited the web site for this curriculum and liked what I saw.)
I guess you could ask if classes in art, history or music are effective? It’s hard to measure the results once you wander even a little distance from the hard sciences, and even they have trouble coming up with hard data at times. Many of the most important subjects like leadership are difficult to teach and have results hard to measure. Ethics is no different. We “cast our bread on the water” and hope for it to return.
Have we maxed out on online education? « Kay Steiger
A new survey from Eduventures (the terrible punny name is not my fault) comes via Inside Higher Ed and finds that though the number of adults entering into higher education as non-traditional students continues to increase, the percentage interested in taking all or most classes online has roughly stayed stagnent. The survey found 38 percent were interested in taking all or most of their classes online compared with 37 percent in 2006.
“We feel this is the watershed moment,” said Richard Garrett, vice president and principal analyst for Eduventures and the report’s author told IHE. “After years of endless growth, we’re definitely coming to more of a plateau situation.”
This is from Kay Steiger, who has a web site that deals in a thoroughly intelligent manner with education and other issues. She’s clever and often eloquent. I recommend you visit the site.
I find the findings quite interesting. You would think from reading the web and the news that online education is spreading across the nation like some Medieval plague. If the phenomenon has maxed out; if online education maxed, then we have arrived at a balance between online and in-class teaching. This is important to me, for one thing, because I teach both traditional classes and online. But I have another issue, I love the whole idea of self improvement and higher education. I am delighted by spacious campuses, earnest undergraduates talking about major issues, people trying to think, and, above all, teaching. I like the environment and I believe for many people, it is their opportunity to think new thoughts and become different people, different than the expectation imposed on them by family and high school. Online education has many advantages but it cannot create an environment of hundreds, often thousands of fellow learners trying to understand what is important.
So it would appear from the study that physical campuses still make sense and have a future.
Do businesses have ethical obligations beyond what the law and shareholders require? | The CQ Researcher Blog
“In a free-enterprise, private-property system,” Friedman wrote, “a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of a business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.”
In this view, going beyond those basic requirements — for instance, as Friedman wrote, spending more to reduce pollution than “the amount that is in the best interests of the corporation or that is required by law” — amounts to improperly spending money that belongs to the shareholders.
The U.S. concept of free-market capitalism is not, of course, universally accepted. Karl Marx, the intellectual father of communism, saw profit as the result of capitalist exploitation of workers. Socialist and communist systems assert that some or all of business profits rightfully belong to society.
But among those who embrace capitalism, many say ethical obligations go well beyond simply making a profit.
A survey of business executives from around the world by consulting firm McKinsey & Co. found that only a minority wholeheartedly embraced Friedman’s view. Sixteen percent of respondents agreed that business should “focus solely on providing the highest possible returns to investors while obeying all laws and regulations.” But 84 percent said the role of large corporations should be to “generate high returns to investors but balance [that] with contributions to the broader public good.” [Footnote 14]
Does business believe in the absolute pursuit of profit to the exclusion of all other goals? A study by McKinsey and Co. indicates otherwise. This is an unexpected result based on my perceptions but, of course, I live in the Southern United States where free market worship is one very short step below the more traditional forms of worship.
I hope the study is correct. We need business leaders willing to be valuable members of our communities. Without their participation, the ties that bind us together as a people, a civilization, weaken.
Wealth maximization is long term process. It refers the value of the company generally expressed in the value of the stock.
Value maximization says that managers should make all decisions so as to increase the total long run market value of the firm. Total value is the sum of the value of all financial claims on the firm- including equity, debt, preferred stock and warrants.
Here, the executives undertake investing in new projects, maximizing profits from existing products and services, controlling cost, and adding value to the company through process, which reflects in the price of the stock, but always in the increase in Net Asset Value and Equity Per Share.
The wealth of corporate owners is measured by the share price of the stock, which in turn is based on the timing of returns (cash flows), their magnitude and their risk. Maximizing share price will maximize owner wealth.
Cash flow and risk are the key decision variables in maximizing owner wealth.
When investors look at a company they not only look at dollar profit but also profit margins, return on capital, and other indicators of efficiency. Profit maximization does not achieve the objectives of the firm’s owners; therefore wealth maximization is better option than profit maximization.
I have taught business ethics for some years now and I have tried to emphasize the application of religion to the field. Several Protestant denominations have strong codes of business ethics, and the Catholic Church has an vast array of teachings on the proper conduct of business from a moral standpoint. However, both Judaism and the religion of Islam have a lot to say about business ethics. I have been impressed by the Islamic take on what constitutes proper business conduct.
This brief video is eloquent and beautifully explains the concept of “blessings” in business dealings. Blessings in this teaching are the benefits of the bargain. They are not to be concentrated on one side of the deal but both parties are to share in the prosperity brought about by business deals. I was delighted with the concept and I hope you enjoy it too.
Kaaba at night (from wikipedia)
In these days, when many are willing to judge all practitioners of Islam as militant radicals, it is important to recognize the basic morality of the religion and the benefits it has brought hundreds of millions of people. Among those benefits is a strong well taught set of rules for Islamic business ethics.
Since Romney Raised the Issue of Freeloaders, What Is Erskine Bowles? | Beat the Press
Since we seem destined to have a national debate on the topic of government freeloaders in the wake of the Romney fundraising video, it might be worth asking how we think about someone getting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for sitting on a corporate board for which they did little obvious work. Erskine Bowles, a possible future Treasury Secretary, is of course the poster child for such people.
Mr. Bowles has earned millions of dollars sitting on corporate boards over the last decade. The stock prices of the companies on whose boards he sat have mostly plummeted. Since 2003 the Erskine Bowles stock index has lost more than one third of its value. By comparison, the S&P 500 has risen by more than 50 percent. If Mr. Bowles was trying to serve shareholders, he has not done a very good job.
Dean Baker writing in his blog, Beat the Press, wonders who the definition of freeloader fits most. It is not flattering to Mr. Bowles.
“Beat the Press” is the first web site I read when I get up in the morning. If you are bored with the nonsensical claims of economists who have affiliated themselves with the malefactors of great wealth, Mr. Baker is the man for you. He is independent, intellectual and speaks the language of economics in a way a layman can appreciate.
Mark Gongloff: Financial Crisis Cost U.S. $12.8 Trillion Or More: Study
The 2008 financial crisis cost the U.S. economy at least $12.8 trillion, a new study found — and that’s a “very conservative number,” according to the authors.
The study, timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, is a direct counter to the banking industry’s relentless warnings of the potential costs of new financial regulations.
The cost of letting the banks wreck the global economy again is far, far higher.
The crisis-cost estimate, generated by Better Markets, a non-profit group lobbying for financial reform, is only a measure of actual and potential lost economic growth due to the crisis. It does not include many other costs, including the costs of extraordinary government steps taken to avoid “a second Great Depression.” It does not include unquantifiable costs like the “human suffering that accompanies unemployment, foreclosure, homelessness and related damage,” the authors noted.
Most people believe that TARP costs 700 billion and that’s what the crisis cost Americans. Wrong. It is 12.8 trillion dollars. That’s a little bit more. We all took a hit.
I’m not going to do an ethics analysis. If you can’t see an ethics problem here, I don’t know what I can do for your thinking.
Below is short segment from a web site in United Kingdom. It is explaining in layman’s terms how the law on unfair dismissal works. Don’t expect to see any of this apply in any way in the United States.We have the doctrine of Employment at Will.
UNFAIR DISMISSAL COMPENSATION
You may be eligible for unfair dismissal compensation if you have been fired illegally. If you believe that your employer has no reason to fire you because of your job performance, it is a good idea to get a lawyer to protect your rights. Sometimes, the employer does not follow the proper procedure of firing, and due to some reason that have nothing to do with you, you are fired without given a due notice. In case you want a leave and get fired, the ground of firings may not be legal. If you live far and get late to work and have been asking to change your timings and get fired instead of getting flexible timing, you may be eligible for compensation.
Codes of conduct of employers are part of written law and anyone can challenge acts of employers if they feel they have been treated unfairly. Proper dismissal procedures are required to be followed, or else the dismissal might be considered unfair. When you do not get a proper notice of dismissal, or do not get paid the notice period, your employer has breached the employment contract. You will be eligible to get compensation in such a case. If some compensation has been paid but is not the right amount, you can still sue the employer over short paying you. You can make two claims, for unlawful dismissal and breach of contract as well. It is important for all fired employees to seek legal help, so they can get unfair dismissal compensation.
I had already encountered in Australian law the idea that a worker cannot be fired for anything but cause or serious financial problems in the business. I have now discovered the same kind of laws in the United Kingdom. I will be doing more searching on this set of laws in the future. I do believe these kinds of laws strongly point to the injustice of the doctrine in the United States of “Employment at Will.”
Wrong profession? Lost perspective? Just another whiny, self-absorbed wool-gatherer? Guilty as charged. Hey, I’m a card-carrying, fellow-traveling union member! But I do have one suggestion for civilians. As a public school teacher, I considered myself a public servant, like cops, firemen, food service workers and other “heroes” who are willing to do difficult, thankless, vital jobs for very little pay and not much more than the scorn of their fellow citizens. Thus, the door of my classroom was always open to parents, administrators, politicians, journalists and passers-by. But I waited in vain for company, for visitors were scarce. All the jibber jabber about public education these days seems to be based solely on idle speculation, memories of a Golden Age and the bilge that the LA Times publishes in lieu of objective journalism. So please stop by a classroom sometime. You might be surprised. And you’re paying for it.
There’s a good reason that American slaves were forbidden to learn to read: Literacy is freedom. Free, high quality, accessible, equitable education is the bedrock of a free society. That’s not just Tea Party flag-waving; it’s the Incontestable Eternal Truth. Sadly, in the final analysis, historical and political forces are at work that leave us, the teachers and students, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. People, people, people! Can’t you see that The Man wants us ignorant? Unite, my friends! We have nothing to lose but our … ohferchrissakenevermind!
But remember, if you’re there when the last dog reaches the last hill: Lost causes are the onlyones worth fighting for
The teaching profession is an endangered species. A learned and difficult profession is under attack with the apparent intent of reducing its pay to something akin to a hamburger flipper. The ideas of the “reformers” seem to consist not of putting money into public schools but removing teacher protections. Teachers are now portrayed in popular movies and “reformer” financed documentaries as evil or incompetent obstacles to educational success. Teaching is an institution laboring under the ridiculous burden of No Child Left Behind, a barrage of often bizarre state mandated rules and governed by administrators who at times seem to be focused on driving out every vestige of independence and enthusiasm. We destroy the teaching profession at our peril. It is an institution that has served this country well.
Make no mistake. The public school teaching crisis will have real casualties not just among the faculty. Without teacher opposition, school boards will have much more power to create rules and policies without interference.* They are the main line of defense against the threat of privatization, a pet project of a good number of billionaires and largely a failure at improving test scores.** But the simplest and clearest danger is that many teachers will leave the profession. After all, in a nation that believes “you get what you pay for,” many have decided teaching is worth but little.
James Pilant
*Don’t take my word that school boards do strange things. Run a simple search, school board controversy, and then have fun wading through the entries.
Policy Brief: The Evidence on Charter Schools and Test Scores
December 2011
(This is a brief excerpt from the much larger report which I recommend you download and read yourself.)
This discussion on charter school evidence will focus almost entirely on test-based outcomes. Testing
data provide an incomplete picture of student and school performance, while other outcomes, such as
graduation rates, parental satisfaction and future earnings, are no less important. This review focuses on
testing results because they are the outcome used in most charter studies, whereas analyses positing
alternative measures are more scarce.
That said, there is a considerable body of evidence that corroborates CREDO’s findings. For instance, a
2009 RAND Corporation analysis of charter schools in five major cities and three states found that, in
every location, charter effects were either negative or not discernibly different from regular public
1 Effect sizes can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, some researchers argue that even very small testing gains are
associated with substantial increases in economic growth (e.g., Hanushek and Woessman, 2007). In addition, achievement is
cumulative, which means that single-year effects can understate the total impact of schools.
| 3
schools’ (Zimmer et al., 2009). As one might expect, charters tended to get better results the more years
they had been in operation.
Similarly, a 2010 report by researchers from Mathematica Policy Research presented the findings from a
randomized controlled trial of 36 charter middle schools in 15 states (Gleason et al., 2010). They found
that the vast majority of students in these charters did no better and no worse than their counterparts in
regular public schools in terms of both math and reading scores, as well as virtually all the 35 other
outcomes studied. There was, however, important underlying variation – e.g., results were more positive
for students who stayed in the charters for multiple years, and those who started out with lower scores (as
mentioned above, CREDO reached the same conclusions).
A number of state-specific studies buttress the conclusion of wide variation in charter effects.
A paper published in 2006 found slightly negative effects of charters in North Carolina (Bifulco and
Ladd, 2006); CREDO’s results for North Carolina were mixed, but essentially uncovered no difference
large enough to be educationally meaningful (CREDO, 2009).
Booker et al. (2004) found a positive charter impact in Texas after 2-3 years of attendance, but the effect
sizes were very small. Gronberg and Jansen (2005) reached the same conclusion for elementary and
middle but not high schools, while CREDO (2009) found small negative effects overall.
A published analysis of charters in Florida showed negative effects during these schools’ first five years
of attendance, followed by comparable (with regular public schools) performance thereafter. The reading
impact was discernibly higher, but the difference was modest (Sass, 2006). It’s also worth noting that
CREDO’s (2009) Florida analysis found a small positive effect on charter students after three years of
attendance, while a 2005 RAND report on California charters revealed no substantial difference in overall
performance (Zimmer and Buddin, 2005; also see Zimmer, et al., 2003).
Lastly, a 2006 study using Idaho data showed moderate positive charter effects (Ballou, et al., 2006),
while students attending Arizona charters for 2-3 years had small relative gains, according to a 2001
Goldwater Institute analysis (Solmon, et al., 2001; note that, once again, CREDO found the opposite).
Finally, most recently, Mathematica and CRPE released a report presenting a large, thorough analysis of
charter management organizations, or CMOs (Furgeson, et al., 2011). In order to be included in the study,
CMOs had to be well-established and run multiple schools, which meant that the schools that were
included are probably better than the average charter in terms of management and resources. The overall
results (middle schools only) were disappointing – even after three years of attendance, there was no
significant difference between CMO and comparable regular public school students’ performance in
math, reading, science, or social studies. Some CMOs’ schools did quite well, but most were no different
or worse in terms of their impact.
In an attempt to “summarize” the findings of these and a few other single-city studies not discussed
above, the latest meta-analysis from the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) concluded that
charter and regular public school effects were no different in middle school reading and high school
reading and math (Betts and Tang, 2011). There were statistically discernible positive impacts in middle
school math and elementary school math and reading, but the effect sizes were very modest. The primary
conclusion, once again, was that “charters under-perform traditional public schools in some locations,
grades, and subjects, and out-perform traditional public schools in other locations, grades, and subjects.”
This lines up with prior reviews of the literature (e.g., Hill, et al., 2006).
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.