Reflections on Business Ethics: What Is It? What Causes It? And, What Should A Course In Business Ethics Include?

1991 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Art Wolfe

Business ethics courses have been launched with professors from business pulling on one oar, and professors of philosophy pulling on the other, but they lack a sense of direction. Let's begin with the basics: What is an ehtical decision? More fundamentally, why the interest in professional ethics in the first place?There are over 300 centers for the study of applied ethics in this country—why? The events which face our society today (income and wealth disparity, environmental degradation, etc.) are outside the business-oriented collection of shared beliefs that set our public policy agenda. Our beliefs are too narrow, thus we see, understand, and control small slices of life.Business ethics should be the study of the structure and impact on us of what we call “business science,” e.g., accounting, marketing, economics, law, etc., and the corresponding study of the process of what Carl Jung called individuation: learning to become one's own unique self in the face of these bodies of professional knowledge which have structured our lives and charted the direction for our sensibilities for too long.

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nandi Lubbe ◽  
Dave Lubbe

In this article on the background of business ethics and business ethics education, the following important questions, discussions and issues will be addressed: Firstly, a brief overview on the development of philosophy will be provided since business ethics can be viewed as a subdivision of philosophy. An exposition of how business ethics links with philosophy will (among others) be provided. Due to the fact that this article largely concentrates on the accountancy and auditing professions, referral will also briefly be made to how the so-called “professional ethics” of the concerned professions fit into the comprehensive discipline of philosophy. The second aspect to be addressed will be regarding one of the main challenges in presenting business ethics courses, namely to keep the subject pragmatic and practically applicable – which may be difficult, possibly due to the discipline’s development from philosophy. If the pragmatic and practical focus is not maintained, business ethics may result in a mere philosophical and theoretical course that has little to do with ethical challenges encountered in the real accountancy profession and business world. Reasons are mentioned that may result in business ethics courses being irrelevant and impractical and therefore possible solutions to this problem are also suggested. Other challenges that may prevent lecturers from presenting business ethics courses in an optimal manner are also briefly discussed in this section.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiangsheng Huang

BACKGROUND As of the end of February 2020, 2019-nCoV is currently well controlled in China. However, the virus is now spreading globally. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of outbreak prevention and control measures in a region. METHODS A model is built for find the best fit for two sets of data (the number of daily new diagnosed, and the risk value of incoming immigration population). The parameters (offset and time window) in the model can be used as the evaluation of effectiveness of outbreak prevention and control. RESULTS Through study, it is found that the parameter offset and time window in the model can accurately reflect the prevention effectiveness. Some related data and public news confirm this result. And this method has advantages over the method using R0 in two aspects. CONCLUSIONS If the epidemic situation is well controlled, the virus is not terrible. Now the daily new diagnosed patients in most regions of China is quickly reduced to zero or close to zero. Chinese can do a good job in the face of huge epidemic pressure. Therefore, if other countries can do well in prevention and control, the epidemic in those places can also pass quickly.


2021 ◽  
pp. 194173812110282
Author(s):  
Ayami Yoshihara ◽  
Erin E. Dierickx ◽  
Gabrielle J. Brewer ◽  
Yasuki Sekiguchi ◽  
Rebecca L. Stearns ◽  
...  

Background: While increased face mask use has helped reduce COVID-19 transmission, there have been concerns about its influence on thermoregulation during exercise in the heat, but consistent, evidence-based recommendations are lacking. Hypothesis: No physiological differences would exist during low-to-moderate exercise intensity in the heat between trials with and without face masks, but perceptual sensations could vary. Study Design: Crossover study. Level of Evidence: Level 2. Methods: Twelve physically active participants (8 male, 4 female; age = 24 ± 3 years) completed 4 face mask trials and 1 control trial (no mask) in the heat (32.3°C ± 0.04°C; 54.4% ± 0.7% relative humidity [RH]). The protocol was 60 minutes of walking and jogging between 35% and 60% of relative VO2max. Rectal temperature (Trec), heart rate (HR), temperature and humidity inside and outside of the face mask (Tmicro_in, Tmicro_out, RHmicro_in, RHmicro_out) and perceptual variables (rating of perceived exertion (RPE), thermal sensation, thirst sensation, fatigue level, and overall breathing discomfort) were monitored throughout all trials. Results: Mean Trec and HR increased at 30- and 60-minute time points compared with 0-minute time points, but no difference existed between face mask trials and control trials ( P > 0.05). Mean Tmicro_in, RHmicro_in, and humidity difference inside and outside of the face mask (ΔRHmicro) were significantly different between face mask trials ( P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in perceptual variables between face mask trials and control trials ( P > 0.05), except overall breathing discomfort ( P < 0.01). Higher RHmicro_in, RPE, and thermal sensation significantly predicted higher overall breathing discomfort ( r2 = 0.418; P < 0.01). Conclusion: Face mask use during 60 minutes of low-to-moderate exercise intensity in the heat did not significantly affect Trec or HR. Although face mask use may affect overall breathing discomfort due to the changes in the face mask microenvironment, face mask use itself did not cause an increase in whole body thermal stress. Clinical Relevance: Face mask use is feasible and safe during exercise in the heat, at low-to-moderate exercise intensities, for physically active, healthy individuals.


2020 ◽  
pp. 096973302096677
Author(s):  
Michael Wilson ◽  
Marie Wilson ◽  
Suzanne Edwards ◽  
Lynette Cusack ◽  
Richard Wiechula

Background: Legal assisted dying is a rare event, but as legalisation expands, requests for it will likely increase, and the nurse most often receives the informal, initial request. Objectives: To assess the effects of attitude in interaction with normative and control beliefs on an intention to respond to a request for legal assisted dying. Ethical considerations: The study had the lead author’s institutional ethics approval, and participants were informed that participation was both anonymous and voluntary. Methodology: This was a cross-sectional correlational study of 377 Australian registered nurses who completed an online survey. Generalised linear modelling assessed the effects of independent variables against intended responses to requests for legal assisted dying. Results: Compared to nurses who did not support legal assisted dying, nurses who did had stronger beliefs in patient rights, perceived social expectations to refer the request and stronger control in that intention. Nurses who did not support legal assisted dying had stronger beliefs in ethics of duty to the patient and often held dual intentions to discuss the request with the patient but also held an intention to deflect the request to consideration of alternatives. Discussion: This study advances the international literature by developing quantified models explaining the complexity of nurses’ experiences with requests for an assisted death. Attitude was operationalised in interaction with other beliefs and was identified as the strongest influence on intentions, but significantly moderated by ethical norms. Conclusion: The complex of determinants of those intentions to respond to requests for an assisted death suggests they are not isolated from each other. Nurses might have distinct intentions, but they can also hold multiple intentions even when they prioritise one. These findings present opportunities to prepare nurses in a way that enhances moral resilience in the face of complex moral encounters.


Janus Head ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-238
Author(s):  
Kevin Aho ◽  

This paper attempts to reconcile, what appear to be, two conflicting accounts of authenticity in Heidegger's thought. Authenticity in Being and Time (1927) is commonly interpreted in 'existentialist' terms as willful commitment and resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) in the face of one's own death but, by the late 1930's, is reintroduced in terms of Gelassenlieit, as a non-willful openness that "lets beings be." By employing Heidegger's conception of authentic historicality (Geschiclidichkeit), understood as the retrieval of Dasein's past, and drawing on his writings on Hölderlin in the 1930'sand 1940's, I suggest that the ancient interpretation of leisure and festivity may play an important role in unifying these conflicting accounts. Genuine leisure, interpreted as a form of play (Spiel), frees us from inauthentic busy-ness and gives us an opening to face the abyssal nature of our own being and the mystery that "beings are" in the flrst place. To this end, leisure re-connects us with wonder (Erstaunen) as the original temperament of Western thought. In leisurely wonder, the authentic self does not seek purposive mastery and control over beings but calmly accepts the unsettledness ofbeing and is, as a result, allowed into the original openness or space of play of time (Zeit-Spiel-Raum) that lets beings emerge-into-presence on their own terms.


2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-365
Author(s):  
Peter Gratton ◽  

With Eichmann in Jerusalem, we have, I would admit, a most unlikely case study for use in a business ethics classroom. The story of Eichmann is already some sixty years old, and his activities in his career as a Nazi were far beyond the pale of even the most egregious cases found in the typical business ethics case books. No doubt, there is some truth to the fact that introducing Eichmann’s story into an applied ethics class would inevitably depict an unseemly analogy between the practices of latter day corporations and the bureaucracy of the Nazi era. My argument here, though, is that the story of Adolf Eichmann, as depicted in Hannah Arendt’s well-known Eichmann in Jerusalem, offers a philosophically cogent account of judgment and ethical decision-making that future business managers and employees would do well to heed. Indeed, Eichmann in Jerusalem, originally a series of press accounts for New Yorker magazine, deserves consideration alongside the Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, and other classic ethics texts in a business ethics syllabus. This is not to say that Arendt’s work is uncontroversial; there are serious questions to be raised about both her depiction of Eichmann and her conclusions about “the banality of evil.” Nevertheless, her account of ethics, which, with its account of ethical duties and its case study of Eichmann’s character, shows both its Aristotelian and Kantian influences, is a warning to readers who would conflate morality with state laws and their duties with the needs of superiors. In short, I argue that, despite her well-known critique of modern large scale economies and her general avoidance of discussions of post-industrial corporations, Arendt may be a business ethicist of the first order.


Author(s):  
Laith Abdullah Alaryan ◽  
Ayman Ahmad Abu Haija ◽  
Ali Mahmoud Alrabei

The application of fair value has started early in Jordan, which was a bone of contention among supporters and opponents. This study came to provide empirical evidence on the relationship between fair value and financial manipulation. The study extracted data from 45 companies’ annual reports during a ten-year period (1997- 2006) five years before and after the application of fair value to examine the relationship among the application of fair value accounting and the presence of manipulation in financial statements. The result indicates that the number of firms that manipulated information in the financial statements had increased after applying fair value accounting. The results have policy implications, one of which is that the Jordanian government should either enact new regulations or modify the current regulations in the face of an increasing number of manipulations by firms after the application of fair value accounting. These regulations are needed to increase both the managements’ and accountants’ responsibility towards the firms and to enhance the business ethics of the organization.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Henry Dickson

<p>Architecture is under attack! Where it could once be understood as a medium of communication which helped society to situate their existential role within society. Today it can be increasingly understood as little more than a spatial device necessitated by humanities inert vulnerability to the exterior landscape. In the face of the post-modern phenomenon of speed, architecture is becoming a tectonic of interference. Cars to pass around it, communications pierce through it and for the people whom exist within it, it increasingly disappears.  While the problems that stem from this remain unclear. Through investigating the work of French intellectual and humanist Paul Virilio, the accidents that this may cause, become slowly exposed. Manifesting themselves beyond just the physical accidents which occur as a direct result of technological progress. But equally as accidental shifts of human consciousness leading to permanent alteration in the ways in which reality is informed. Due to the fact that, perception, which must be understood as filtered and subconsciously reformatted, is a learned response to the otherwise overwhelming stimulation of both physical and virtual speed.  Virilio proposes that what this will lead to is a profound disconnection between the individuals who experience the speed of hypermodernity and the objective world. A world which is informed by both by the unrelenting passing of time but also the historical events which slowly play out over time. The problem with this, Virilio would argue, is that the ability to react appropriately to the events and accidents which make up this contemporary existence, is contingent upon this connection. Therefore it would appear that this problem becomes self-perpetuating. The more speed disconnects individuals from the world around them, the harder it becomes to react to the accidents caused by speed, because these accidents increasingly become perceived, or rather not perceived, as time in which nothing happened.  In direct opposition to this, the fading memory of the battle of Verdun is forced up against this paradigm, providing the necessary groundwork for Virilio’s work to be explored.  Through this dialogue, design conclusions will be reached through the process of designing a memorial architecture, which will be positioned on the site of the battlefield. A process that explores architectures role in returning a collective consciousness back to the battle of Verdun. Whilst simultaneously reconsidering the nature of this responsibility in the contemporary landscape that society has found itself within, only a 100 years after the final shots were fired.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 158
Author(s):  
Thomas Atmaja Adi ◽  
Ganesha Wandawa ◽  
Wahyu Hidayat

<div><p class="Els-history-head">Threats to the security of the Republic of Indonesia are classified as military and non-military threats. One of the non-military threats is the danger of an epidemic, which includes a threat with a public safety dimension. The growth of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) cases has been very fast. As of August 4, 2020, globally 18.14 million cases were confirmed worldwide with 691,013 deaths or a Case Fatality Ratio (CFR) of 3.8%. The 2019-nCoV Outbreak became a COVID-19 pandemic which has an impact on public health and the world economy. ASEAN Plus member countries are deploying militaries to help contain the spread and control the effects of this pandemic. The military is deployed because it is considered a trained resource and is better prepared to deal with emergencies. The purpose of this study is to analyse the joint action of the regional military in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study uses an explanative qualitative method using NVivo as a data processing tool and data analysis using Soft System Methodology (SSM). The results of this study found that the joint regional military actions that have been carried out to stem the spread of COVID-19 are dominated by activities carried out by the ASEAN Center of Military Medicine (ACMM) as the leading sector, activities that have been carried out are the exchange of information and sharing practical activities in managing COVID-19, holding a Tabletop Exercise (TTX) for public health emergency response, joint research and sharing health materials among ASEAN Plus member countries. Meanwhile, the ASEAN Plus network of biological and radiological defense experts has yet to show specific activities to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.</p></div>


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document