Tag: ethics

What’s the difference between the News of the World and mechanically-recovered chicken? (via QA)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

This is marvelous. Here we have some subversive, original thinking about our current state of morality. Do the ends justify the means? Murdoch’s empire is a vicious example of raw power in action. It deserves some tough satire.

James Pilant

Or, Does the end justify the means? I'm always on the look out for a good analogy. This one popped into my head. Once upon a time, the people who run meat processing plants became frustrated that little bits of otherwise delicious (and saleable) meat clung doggedly to a carcass after it had been stripped to make chicken nuggets, beefburgers or satay sticks. So, they invented ever more elaborate means by which to remove the meats from the bones. ' … Read More

via QA

Good or Evil? It Depends. (via Words Have Consequences)

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

Our author here believes that we can draw parallels and lessons from popular literature. So do I. I tell my students that literature tells you how people think, relate and improve themselves. It makes the reader subtle and develops insights.

Read to understand, read for knowledge, read to build judgment. Read so that you live at least a little while in your life in the company of others that you can have real insight into. Because very seldom in our lives do we bother to spend a few minutes understanding another.

Follow the writer’s thinking and see what you think.

James Pilant

Good or Evil? It Depends. On my 24th birthday, I received a gift which, little did I know would change my life.  My friend Matt gave me a book.  Now, at the time, I was not to thrilled with receiving a book for my birthday.  I wanted money or a gift certificate or something, other than a book.  I was not, what one might call, an avid reader.  So I thanked him for the book and put it on my shelf, which at that point consisted of cardboard boxes sitting on their sides.  Aft … Read More

via Words Have Consequences

Power and Authority (via Business Management)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Here we have a discourse on authority, a rare and precious gem. Few understand it. Most who believe they have it don’t. Those that understand it seldom explain. Can you tell if the author knows his subject or not?

Here’s a paragraph –

French and Raven identified five bases of power as: legitimate, referent, expert, reward and coercive. Legitimate power is authority. For example, police has legitimate power. Referent power arises from personal authority. It can be someone whom you like and want to follow (e.g your role model). When someone has expert power, that means this person has knowledge which others respect. Reward and Coercive power is the classic definition of carrot and stick. It means the person who holds the power to reward or punish has this type of power.

James Pilant

Power means “the ability to influence people”. For example, if you have the ability to persuade your friends to move in the same direction as you do, then you have the power. Authority is the “official power”. For example if you are assigned to a manager position where your subordinates are obliged to follow your orders then you have the authority. Military officers have the authority. French and Raven identified five bases of power as: legitimat … Read More

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Business Ethics and ?Blind Spots? | Ethics (via rumimibofyt)

On By southwerkIn business ethics3 Comments

The book sounds interesting; I will have to have a look at it.

Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It

I can be found here at Amazon. com.

James Pilant

Ann Tenbrunsel, the Rex and Alice A. Martin Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, discusses her new book “Blind Spots: Why We Fail to do What’s Right and What to do About it.” “A blind spot is an unknown obstacle that prevents us from seeing our unethical behavior,” Tenbrunsel explains. “It doesn’t allow us to see the gap between who we think we are, who we’d like to be, and who we truly are.” … Read More

via rumimibofyt

The Beginning of The End of Rupert Murdoch? – Rebekah Brooks resigns over phone-hacking scandal (via Kempton – ideas Revolutionary)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

When I first saw this, all I saw was the first part of the headline, and I thought, “No, he can’t be stopped.” But then I caught the part where Rebekah Brooks resigns and thought, “Maybe he is mortal after all. ”

James Pilant

The Beginning of The End of Rupert Murdoch? - Rebekah Brooks resigns over phone-hacking scandal Given the business smart of Rupert Murdoch and the firepower one can buy from hiring Edelman, the largest global PR firm, it may still be too early to say this is the "Beginning of The End of" of Murdoch. But at least it is easier to say this may be the beginning of the end of Rebekah Brooks. Guardian, "Rebekah Brooks resigns over phone-hacking scandal – News International chief stops short of full apology, saying she no longer wants to be 'focal … Read More

via Kempton – ideas Revolutionary

stealth marketing (via consummate consumer)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I think this is a very clever post about a growing method of marketing. This is a kind of supercharged “keeping up with the Jones” method which has more than a few moral failings. Of course, in movies and television, the struggling middle class is largely absent. We focus on corporate over achievers with vast sums of money (The Proposal, etc.) or supposedly Middle Americans who never seem to have real money problems. This move is, of course, tripe, and the author here calls it out appropriately.

It’s a good post and this blogger is focused on consumer, So, you might pay more than one visit.

James Pilant

stealth marketing i watched "The Joneses" today, a mildly amusing movie about a fabulous fake family of four that is actually a walking-talking advertisement. Demi Moore and David Duchovny play Mom and Dad to two attractive teenagers, and they sweep into sweet suburbia with their seductive lifestyle and get their unassuming neighbors to keep up with the Joneses by buying everything they have. they call this "stealth marketing.": movie is alright. it gets a little … Read More

via consummate consumer

Teaching difficult texts (via jay.blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I talk about this a lot myself. My primary gripes are that teachers often teach unimportant things because they are easy to grade. Sometimes, I see meaningless questions asked because they lend themselves well to an easily gradable format. Here’s a disguised version of one I saw –

The Social Security Act was passed by Congress in ….
A. 1935
B. 1936
C. 1937
or D. 1928.

If your career and life depend on knowing the year that social security passed in the format of a Jeopardy question, that would be a good question. In every other way it is useless.

How should the questions be phrased? Like this –

The Social Security Act was passed by Congress in …
A. The first few years of the Roosevelt Administration.
B. The last years of the Hoover Administration.
C. As one of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs in the mid-sixties.
or D. With the founding of the Constitution.

This places the Social Security Act in historical perspective, and it allows reasoning to be used. You can use what you learned in a variety of venues to determine if the act would have been something that the founding fathers or Herbert Hoover would have done.

I believe in teaching difficult subjects. I believe my students can handle difficult material. And I believe that teaching is an art whose highest practitioners can rise to meet the challenges of complexity and ambiguity.

James Pilant

Just a short post that got me thinking about this. In our Inquiry Education class, we read Wintergirls, a novel about a young girl, Lia, who has anorexia. It takes place in the days, weeks and months after her "best friend," Cassie, who had bulimia, died. It's an intense book with a lot of touchy and sometimes controversial events. In a nutshell, it's the book you want kids to open up and read but you don't want to teach it because of the subject … Read More

via jay.blog

they tell us what they want (via getting lost in skylines; trying to forget)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I think this level of anger entirely appropriate. I was appalled by the “newspaper’s” conduct in hacking the voice mails of crime victims and their families.

James Pilant

they tell us what they want I just want to express my disgust and disbelief at what has been uncovered about the News of the World and their phone hacking. It's absolutely obscene. I also want to applaud the Guardian for their efforts in revealing it. This is one of the first times in history that one newspaper has investigated another (acc to tonight's This Week on BBC1), and given the results, you can see why that is. It's no surprise that they're the ones to have done it … Read More

via getting lost in skylines; trying to forget

Turns of events (via Sujato’s Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

Religions other than Christian struggle with equality for women and other societal changes.

Read these two paragraphs from the larger article below –

What exactly is going on here? The governing principles of Wat Pa Pong remain as they have ever been: discrimination against women and submission to the authority of the Ajahns. Since the majority of devotees reject these principles, they have been kept secret as far as possible; however this is no longer possible. The only way to ensure survival is to gain absolute power over the considerable wealth and property invested in the monasteries.

We shouldn’t be surprised. The Ajahns have been telling us these things for years. Equality, democracy, rights: according to the clear, often repeated, and explicit teachings of senior Wat Pa Pong Ajahns, these things are alien, ‘Western’ values irrelevant to the Dhamma and of no value for liberation. What we are now seeing is simply these principles put into practice.

(I’m letting the article speak for itself. The religious issues here are of major importance and my knowledge is not deep enough to do careful analysis.) JP

It’s now a year and a half since Ajahn Brahm and Bodhinyana monastery were excommunicated from their monastic circle, Wat Pa Pong, for disobeying orders by ordaining women in accordance with the Buddha’s teachings. Has anything got better? Short answer: not so you’d notice. Long answer: Ajahn Brahm has been in discussions with some of the WPP Ajahns overseas, trying to arrange a forgiveness ceremony, to let go and move ahead. He is clear that nei … Read More

via Sujato’s Blog

Rainbow 6 Leaked; Morality Plays Big (via The Lazy Geeks)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I am really impressed by this. It has been necessary for a long time. If the only way to keep score is to kill as many as possible, you kill as many as possible.

But the world is full of alternative actions. Morality and ethics are important, not only in the world of business but in war and peace.

I used to play a game called Fable in which your characters looks changed to match the moral quality of his actions. My character looked like a hero. No black hat for me.

This is a great development. Let’s give players more choices then choosing 5.45 over 5.56.

James Pilant

Rainbow 6 Leaked; Morality Plays Big Does anyone want to play a game that makes you have to deal with real life choices? Apparently, Ubisoft thinks you do. In a leak from Kotaku, it appears that the new Rainbow 6 game will have a “morality” engine. When you think about it, it is pretty bad ass. If this runs the way that Kotaku claims, it will be one of the most revolutionary games that has come out for First Person Shooters in a long time. I have detailed this game as more of a choo … Read More

via The Lazy Geeks