Business Ethics Newspaper Column Roundup 7/7/10

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure

Edward Lotterman of the Pioneer Press discusses the economic fallacy of mercantilism.

Loren Steffy has a poll up – How long will Hayward remain as head of British Petroleum? I’d get on his site and vote if I were you. Stffey’s previous column speculates on whether or not Libya will acquire British Petroleum.

Jon Talton picks out the best of the writing on our current economic collapse.

Alain Sherter at BNET writes about the likelihood of a Chinese real estate crash. My Chinese students have been saying things to me along the same lines.

David Moon has some interesting thoughts on solving the debt crisis

Sinus Attack!

On By southwerkIn ethics

Only one post for Tuesday, since I got nailed with a good sinus attack. I can still write with a mild one but this wasn’t one of those. To my readers I sincerely apologize. I know writing every day is critical to blogging. I promise to do better tomorrow. JP

New (unpaid) job title at CVS: Customer/cashier (via Minding the Workplace)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism

This comment on the automation of the coffee industry is excellent in its perception of the likely long term damage. This is a second re-blog for Yamada in a relatively brief time but I was struck by the column’s implications and decided to re-blog anyway. jp

One of my occasional stops on the walk from work to the subway is a CVS drugstore in downtown Boston.  Over the past few months, CVS has been installing more self-service checkout counters at this outlet, whereby the customers electronically ring up their purchases and provide payment, without the help of a cashier.  A CVS employee hovers around the self-service counters to help out the befuddled, such as me. Recently I walked in the store and wa … Read More

via Minding the Workplace

Business Ethics Blogging Roundup, 7/6/10

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism

The web site, Engineering Business Ethics, offers a more technical perspective on the Gulf disaster. Good read.

Shel Horowitz at Principled Profit is on vacation until mid July. Hurry back, Shel!

Ethical Houston has a facebook page. Ethical Houston is a web site dealing with ethics from the Sojourners point of view. I want those of you with facebook pages to get to that site and “like” it. Good people and good sites need support. Let’s get our best effort out there!

Gael O’Brien writing in her blog, The Week in Ethics, discusses the concept of Conscious Capitalism. (Conscious Capitalism has its own web site.)

From her blog: Companies that practice conscious capitalism aspire to more than just turning profits; Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, the Container Store and Stonyfield Farms are examples of successful companies that have a higher purpose. Their definition of stakeholder reaches beyond those who benefit directly from the company, to larger social and environmental purposes affecting society.

Chris MacDonald praises a web site from South Africa and its discussion of ethic from a risk management standpoint. I have a reblog of that up on my site.

Ethics and the SME (via The Business Ethics Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism1 Comment

Chris MacDonald has discovered a great South African column talking about business issues. I went and looked at several entries. If you want to look at business in a totally different regulatory, historical and cultural mind set, this is where to go.
Professor MacDonald cites the latest article about ethics. It’s discusses the ethical implications of risk management.

Here's a very nice short article on business ethics, with a particular focus on SMEs (small and medium enterprises). By Hendri Pelser, writing for Times Live (South Africa), Play fair and you will win: With the effects of the global credit crunch still with us, it is pertinent to consider business ethics – the lack thereof helped create the recession. But how does one approach business ethics? In the academic world, it is a philosophical discipli … Read More

via The Business Ethics Blog

Educating My Students – To What End?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure, Teaching2 Comments

I have students. I am college professor. Generally speaking in these very tough economic times, they come to school not for an education but to get that piece of paper they have been grandly told over and over again will get them a job. Oh, yeah, I guess that is confusing, going to school but not for an education. Let me explain.

We have a thing in America called No Child Left Behind, which makes the mammoth and bizarre claim that we can measure progress based on tests. That’s right, bizarre. I might agree with you if had some numbers correlating success with grades (and you don’t). Oh, there are some university studies, which since they develop their very own concept of what we might call success, don’t amount to anything useful. (If you get to decide what determines success for your own programs, you have a tendency to win.)

No Child Left Behind means that for a school to be determined to be successful (worthy of money from the State and the Feds), it has to have good test scores generated by its students. So, in pursuit of this, students are drilled relentlessly in the subjects to be tested. The school that drills its students longer and harder than the others is supposed to be improving. Since the primary indicator of grades is social and economic class, the scores fall into utterly predictable categories. Obviously there are variations. An inspired group of teachers can pump up test scores with skill and effort. But inspired teachers are just like inspired politicians, inspired architects, inspired pediatricians, etc. There are only so many per profession.

Now, you will find that there are people who say we can train teacher to be inspired in large numbers. That enthusiasm and a willingness to go beyond requirements should be the standard. This is nonsense. There are only so many inspired, truly dedicated individuals on earth and that’s it.

The effect over time of teaching to large scale tests is devastating. Students are conditioned not to think but to remember. The advent of the internet solves many problems of remembering and great deal of remembering is useless trivia. America needs thinkers and it’s as if we wish to exterminate them that we do this crazy testing. We have perverted the idea of education from developing human beings to the production of standard products as if on an assembly line. My students aren’t products, they are people. Human achievement is not measured by tests. No test will ever be a substitute for the real life measurements of success these people will produce.

It fills me with rage to look at what has been done to my students. I want thinkers, doers and patriots. What I get are rote learners, good passive students and bumper sticker patriots whose knowledge of the greatness of this nation is limited to the most trivial.

You see, there is a funny thing about these people, these students; they’re magnificent. When I look over my classes I don’t see A and B and C students. I see these people waiting to be told of the enormous power, potential and talent they each carry within them.

My students are the heart and soul of America. They are leaders of the next generation. They work hard. I don’t see the government of the United States lavishing care on these most vital people for the future of this country. There is more an attitude of how much we can make them financially obligated for the rest of their lives and make sure that they don’t escape paying a dime of it.

We need to figure out our priorities. If you truly desire a second rate society of “information” workers, if you truly believe that this country is merely a corporate resource to be disdained if the money is too dear and that only the “right” people should have a say in what happens, this educational system is perfect for you.

This is the United States of American. We can do better.

James Alan Pilant

Australians Fight For Religious Liberty!

On By southwerkIn ethics, Teaching2 Comments


Religious liberty is a two way street, the right to believe and the right not to believe. Not only that but if you do believe, how much and what part. In New South Wales, parents are fight for the right to teach ethics classes instead of scripture classes. The state allows scripture to be taught in schools but a parent can opt out. If a parent opts out, the child is apparently placed in another school room or the school library and does nothing. A group of parents have advocated for ethics classes as an alternative to the scripture classes. This would allow parents to choose not between scripture training and nothing but between scripture training and ethics training.

This just makes sense.

A pilot program was launched and students were given the choice which class to take. Some students in the scripture classes opted to take the ethics classes instead. There has been an outcry from the Catholic and other groups advocating for scriptural education. They don’t have the field all to themselves, though.

In the United States, we already had this lovely opt out provision in a different format. We used to have prayer in the morning of school each day. If a student opted out he could stand out in the hallway while everybody else prayed. I’m old enough to have prayed in public schools before the Supreme Court ruling. At my school, they didn’t bother to give me or the other children a choice to not participate in the prayer, but in other schools they did. I’ve talked and read accounts of people who stood in those hallways, they didn’t think much of it. It was only for a few minutes but I guess it seemed like a long time for them.

All these people advocating for a change want is a choice between scripture and ethics teaching. The current choice is between taking a scripture class and sitting in (what in America is known as) study hall. The current choice is strongly stacked in favor of scripture class. A choice is supposed to be a choice.

James Pilant

State of the Nation – It’s About To Get Worse

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Government Failure, Teaching

The statistics coming in are generally aligned one way, they point down. We’ve had a rough ride so far and it’s going to get worse. The governments of the world are just reacting to the crisis and have no real concept of what to do. The United States government led by Barack Obama appears to have a vague idea that an economic stimulus might be a good idea. However, that same government has had no appetite for bold action and is unlikely to develop any.

We float between two eras. The line between the two time periods will be marked at the banking crisis of 2007-2009 (and the continuing economic crisis left in its wake) and the environmental disaster of 2010. There will be a different United States after these two crisis play themselves out.

Currently we are locked in a battle of ideas. I break them into two kinds. One set of ideas say that there are unchanging and permanent solutions to the economic and social problems we face. The other says that solutions differ with time, place and circumstance. I side for the most part with the second group.

I teach business law and business ethics at the college level. I try to explain to my students that there is no glorious past where everyone was good and obeyed the law, etc. The only promised land is the one we build ourselves. Currently the only promise we seem to feel of any importance is the promise of making money.

You see, if there is a glorious past in which everyone goes to church and everyone obeys the law and in which the nation is a “city on a hill,” then it follows that there are a set of beliefs that all we have to do is emulate. We duplicate the virtues and rules of these paragons of virtue and righteousness, and we become great.

One problem, there is no such time. American history is messy. A lot of people die, often for very little reason. A lot of people wind up suffering terrible discrimination for very little reason. And a lot of people are made to lives lives of pain because they believe something other than common beliefs, and very often, those unfashionable beliefs are the exact beliefs held by the majority now.

However, since there is a loud and vocal part in this country who believe virtue resides in a past America, history will just have to be rewritten. I went to Barnes and Noble on Saturday, and there they were, books explaining that the history of the United States was everything you’d want it to be, that is, if you believe in a kind of Disneyland/Hollywood view of the nation’s history. There is good money in “Disneylanding” history. I don’t want any of it myself. Reality is disgustingly painful, but I will do my best to live there.

If you don’t live in a world hoping for a return to an earlier American, you know, “Take America Back” style people, then you have to deal with current circumstances. The way forward is obscure and difficult. You can’t be sure what’s going to happen and what will work. It gives those advocating a return to the promised land an enormous advantage. They have certainty.

We live in a terrible time. It would be nice if things were simple. They are not. It would be nice if things were certain. They are not.

I do believe in ethics, right and wrong. There are definitely some eternal verities in ethical beliefs. However, the great nostrums I hear are seldom based on ethical principle. When “free market” economics takes on the trappings of religion, it is no more ethical an idea than it was before. When you discover that the founding fathers were all evangelicals and thus, America was based on the Christian religion, you aren’t ethical; you’re lying. When you say that killing, torture, stealing and lying are wrong, and that they always will be, you speak based on ethical principles and we are brothers and sisters under the skin.

I don’t know what is going to come. There is a lot of pain ahead. I believe current levels of unemployment, the highest in American history since the Great Depression, will continue through 2014. I do not believe our government is willing to deal with the challenges facing this country and that if they did, that they are not in any way competent to do so.

We are betwixt and between. Societies under these conditions change or shatter.

I think that what this web site is all about is doing the right thing. I firmly believe that if Americans try to do the right thing, not the greedy thing, the power thing or any thing other than just a sheer dogged devotion to acting as if our only end was what kind of world we would want to have after us, then we will get through this and have the kind of society that the righteous deserve. You get to live in the “City on the Hill” when you deserve it, not because you are supposed to have it.

James Pilant

Planned Obsolescence: Is it Ethical? No. Can We Still Have the Newest Gadgets? Yes! (via Leading in Context™ Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Teaching

Linda Fisher Thornton has a discussion of ethical values in the context of planned obsolescence. She backs it up with a wide variety of links. Her blog posts about once a week. So, you might want to check on her in that time frame. She also writes a guest column for the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Is Planned Obsolescence Ethical?  Every business should know its position on this important question.  Do you know yours? Many companies have the technology to make products that last far longer, and choose not to use it. You know what comes next – the products wear out faster and we have to buy them more often. Is that a responsible way to achieve profitability? Here are some opinions on that question (all of which could be used for good leader … Read More

via Leading in Context™ Blog

Ethics Blogs Roundup July 3rd, 2010

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Privatization

Lauren Bloom has a post wondering how often British Petroleum has lied.

Gael O’Brien on the website, The Week in Ethics, has another post about British Petroleum, in which she discusses the human toll using an an example the life of William Kruse. This is some fine writing. I’d give it a look if I were you.

David Gebler writing from the web site, Free Management Library, discusses safety and costs from an ethical standpoint. Here’s a nice quote from the article:

“However, as we have seen from the fallout from the Gulf Oil Spill, the recent mine accidents in West Virginia, as well as FAA intervention on airline safety issues, relying on government identification of safety issues may no longer be a viable fall back position for companies that have greater knowledge of the issue than the government.”

Shel Horowitz writing from his blog, Principled Profit, argues against the government guaranteeing loans to private companies to build nuclear power plants. He discusses the dangers of nuclear power plants. I am astonished at the hypocrisy of people who continuously shout “free market” to drown out alternative ideas thinking that the government guaranteeing loans to private industry is anything more than corporate hands in the public till. It’s a complete rejection of capitalism. If private industry and investors are unwilling to bear the risks of building nuclear power plants, should they be built?