What is a natural kind? As we shall see, the concept of a natural kind has a long history. Many of the interesting doctrines can be detected in Aristotle, were revived by Locke and Leibniz, and have again become fashionable in recent years. Equally there has been agreement about certain paradigm examples: the kinds oak, stickleback and gold are natural kinds, and the kinds table, nation and banknote are not. Sadly agreement does not extend much further. It is impossible to (...) discover a single consistent doctrine in the literature, and different discussions focus on different doctrines without writers or readers being aware of the fact. In this paper I shall attempt to find a defensible distinction between natural and non-natural kinds. (shrink)

Much has been written about stakeholder analysis as a process by which to introduce ethical values into management decision-making. This paper takes a critical look at the assumptions behind this idea, in an effort to understand better the meaning of ethical management decisions.A distinction is made between stakeholder analysis and stakeholder synthesis. The two most natural kinds of stakeholder synthesis are then defined and discussed: strategic and multi-fiduciary. Paradoxically, the former appears to yield business without ethics and the latter appears (...) to yield ethics without business. The paper concludes by suggesting that a third approach to stakeholder thinking needs to be developed, one that avoids the paradox just mentioned and that clarifies for managers (and directors) the legitimate role of ethical considerations in decision-making. (shrink)

‘… and he arranged it all. It's done me the world of good, I can tell you. And that's why I said that yesterday was both yesterday and two years ago.’‘Well, it still sounds nonsense to me. I told you H. G. Wells would do you no good.’.

1. There is an important argument which can be traced back to Kant's second and third Critiques , and which has been defended by a number of distinguished modern philosophers.1 It goes as follows. Moral judgments are universalizable; that is, I am logically committed to making the same moral judgment about all relevantly similar cases. If I refuse to make the same moral judgment about two relevantly similar cases, then either I believe that they are relevantly different, or I have (...) changed my moral views between examining the first case and examining the second, or I am simply irrational and not a proper subject for discussion. In contrast, however, aesthetic judgments are not universalizable; works of art are necessarily unique. If I say that a painting is aesthetically pleasing or successful or important or striking or whatever, I am not committed to making the same judgment about any relevantly similar work. Occasionally no doubt I might make the same judgment about a relevantly similar work, but I am in no way logically committed to doing so. Indeed in certain cases—the cases which are the topic of this paper—I am logically committed to making an entirely different aesthetic judgment of a relevantly similar work. Since works of art are necessarily unique, copies, fakes, forgeries, pastiches and ‘works in the style of …’, however plausible, however skilful, however close to the original, can never have the same aesthetic merit. Even if my Athena print of a Canaletto were qualitatively identical with the original, it could not have the same aesthetic merit. Even if a modern symphony reproduced perfectly the style of Mozart and even if it were in general of comparable musical quality, it could not have the same aesthetic merit as the forty-one originals. (shrink)

_Conscience and Corporate Culture_ advances the constructive dialogue on a moral conscience for corporations. Written for educators in the field of business ethics and practicing corporate executives, the book serves as a platform on a subject profoundly difficult and timely. Written from the unique vantage point of an author who is a philosopher, professor of business administration, and a corporate consultant A vital resource for both educators in the field of business ethics and practicing corporate executives Forwards the constructive dialogue (...) on a moral conscience for corporations Offers a philosophical and practical approach to considering business ethics. (shrink)

Opening with Ford Motor Company as a case in point, this essay develops a broad and systematic approach to the field of business ethics. After an analysis of the form and content of the concept of responsibility, the author introduces the principle of moral projection as a device for relating ethics to corporate policy. Pitfalls and objections to this strategy are examined and some practical implications are then explored.The essay not only defends a proposition but exhibits a research style and (...) a research program. Philosophical ethics and organizational management are joined in the process. (shrink)

First published in 1997, this volume originated from an article published in Ratio and reapproaches Aristotle in an attempt to define what counts as an irrational action, along with a general account of irrationality based on a large number of specific examples. It begins with Aristotle, and never leaves him far behind. Contemplating akrasia, will, self-knowledge and commensurability, the author demonstrates that we must allow for the possibility of breakdown in cases where someone may fail to do the rational action (...) through weakness of will and that to make sense of akrasia we must be ready to allow for distinct cases. (shrink)

We address how the leaders of a Catholic business school can articulate and assess how well their schools implement the following six principles drawn from Catholic social teaching : produce goods and services that are authentically good; foster solidarity with the poor by serving deprived and marginalized populations; advance the dignity of human work as a calling; exercise subsidiarity; promote responsible stewardship over resources; and acquire and allocate resources justly. We first discuss how the CST principles give substantive content and (...) meaning to the Good Goods, Good Work, and Good Wealth framework in The Vocation of the Business Leader and then discuss their congruencies and tensions with the UNGC and UNPRME principles. Next, we describe the Catholic Identity Matrix, an assessment tool that provides a quantitative and qualitative portrait of how well a Catholic business school integrates, within the scope of its mission and capacities, the three goods and related CST principles in its strategies, policies, activities, and processes. The concluding section discusses implications for ongoing UNGC and UNPRME assessment, reporting, and development efforts, and addresses the generalizability of our approach to business schools who draw their inspiration and moral principles from other faith-based or secular traditions. (shrink)

Our approach in this response is as folIows. In § I, we try to identify accurately Boatright’s central claims-both about Goodpaster’s original paper and about matters of substance independent of that paper. In § 2 and 3, we discuss the plausibility of those claims, first from a legal point of view and then from a moral point of view. Finally, in § 4, we defend the concept of paradox (and, in particular, the Stakeholder Paradox) as a limitation on practical reason (...) which is not necessarily to be lamented. In fact, we believe, some paradoxes are better preserved from rather than guided toward resolution. (shrink)

This paper explains and defends three basic propositions: (1) that our attitudes (particularly American attitudes) towardorganizational ethics are conflicted at a fairly deep level; (2) that in response to this conflict in our attitudes, we often default to variouscounterfeits of conscience (non-moral systems that serve as surrogates for the role of conscience in organizational settings); and(3) that a better response (than relying on counterfeits) would be for leaders to foster a culture of ethical awareness in their organizations. Some practical suggestions (...) are made about fostering such a culture, and a comparison is made between this late-20th-century response to the problem of counterfeits and the classic “naturalistic fallacy” identified in early-20th-century ethics by G. E. Moore. (shrink)

Contrary to W. Murray Hunt’s suggestion, living things deserve moral consideration and inanimate objects do not precisely because living things can intelligibly be said to have interests (and inanimate objects cannot intelligibly said to have interests). Interests are crucial because the concept of morality is noncontingently related to beneficence or nonmaleficence, notions which misfire completely in theabsence of entities capable of being benefited or harmed.

Contrary to W. Murray Hunt’s suggestion, living things deserve moral consideration and inanimate objects do not precisely because living things can intelligibly be said to have interests (and inanimate objects cannot intelligibly said to have interests). Interests are crucial because the concept of morality is noncontingently related to beneficence or nonmaleficence, notions which misfire completely in theabsence of entities capable of being benefited or harmed.

This paper addresses the relationship between theoretical and applied ethics. It directs philosophical attention toward the concept of ideology, conceived as a bridge between high-level principles and decision-making practice. How are we to understand this bridge and how can we avoid the naturalistic fallacy while taking ideology seriously?It is then suggested that the challenge posed by ideology in the arena of organizational ethics is in many ways similar to the challenge posed by developmentalist accounts of moral stages in the arena (...) of individual ethics, namely, how to account for the normative force of frameworks that are theoretically derivative yet practically essential. (shrink)

The ultimate challenge with which we are presented in connection with social investing is no more and no less than this: enhancing the function of conscience in the modern global business corporation. As with individual conscience, however, corporate conscience can be influenced in two ways: from the inside and from the outside. Investment decisions provide external influences, while management values provide influence from the inside.

This article attempts to answer the question, “What are the most important ideas from serving as Executive Editor of the five‐year history project that culminated in the book, Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience?” The ideas focus on clarifying the phenomenon of tenacity; looking at three foundations of our tenacity; and asking “How fragile is our tenacity?” This article also presents three foundational principles that underlie the American experience of corporate responsibility. First, the Checks & Balances Principle tells us that there (...) are checks and balances in democratic capitalism which give us confidence that the pursuit of economic goals will be moderated for the common good. Second, the Moral Projection Principle shows that there is good reason to consider the corporation not only as a legal person under corporate law but also as a moral person. And, last, the Moral Common Ground Principle reflects that there are shared moral values ascertainable by well‐developed consciences in individuals and in corporations. The article concludes with this argument: The tenacity regarding corporate responsibility that has been so characteristic of American capitalism is fragile—calling for serious vigilance if it is to endure. (shrink)

Casuistry is a process of reasoning that focuses upon specific cases or moral problems, as opposed to a general study of ethical theories. In this broad sense every moral philosopher may be regarded as a casuist in some form. The term also has a narrower meaning as it refers to a group of moralists who, in the 16th and 17th century, systematically adopted this method. Casuistry is now one of the options for those who, in the framework of the post-modern (...) anti-systematic attitude, still feel the importance of serious moral debate and reject easy-minded relativism. (shrink)

Excerpt from Some Principles of Moral Theology: And Their Application The present book is an attempt to bring together, from the Bible and from Christian experience, the principles which have guided the Church in dealing with individual souls; to test those principles by the light of modern knowledge; and to apply them to present-day conditions and needs. Some of the traditional terminology of moral theology has been discarded; much has been retained, either because it seemed the best medium for expressing (...) what had to be expressed, or because it would have been impossible otherwise to indicate the development and formulation of Christian thought on the subject. Thus the book may prove of interest not merely to the clergy and others who are confronted by the practical problems of conduct and morality, but also to students entering upon the study of moral theology for its own sake. The Church of England affords her clergy singularly little expert guidance in this matter of the direction of souls. Two branches of the subject - those which go by the names of Christian ethics and the theory and practice of the confessional respectively - have indeed been systematically and fully treated by recent writers and there is a wealth of practical experience to be drawn both from manuals of pastoral theology and from biographies. Moral theology, however, as will appear, com prises much more than the two topics just mentioned. Yet within the last fifty years, apparently, only three books have attempted to present the whole content of moral theology in such a form as should guide the theory and practice of the Church of England, and all three are out of print and consequently difficult of access. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

In this paper we describe and explore a management tool called the Caux Round Table Self-Assessment and Improvement Process (SAIP). Based upon the Caux Round Table Principles for Business — a stakeholder-based, transcultural statement of business values — the SAIP assists executives with the task of shaping their firm’s conscience through an organizational self-appraisal process. This process is modeled after the self-assessment methodology pioneered by the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Program. After briefly describing the SAIP, we address three topics. (...) First, we examine similarities and differences between the Baldrige approach to corporate self-assessment and the self-assessment process utilized within the SAIP. Second, we report initial findings from two beta tests of the tool. These illustrate both the SAIP’s ability to help organizations strengthen their commitment to ethically responsible conduct, and some of the tool’s limitations. Third, we briefly analyze various dimensions of the business scandals of 2001–2002 (Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, etc.) in light of the ethical requirements articulated with the SAIP. This analysis suggests that the SAIP can help link the current concerns of stakeholders — for example, investors and the general public — to organizational practice, by providing companies with a practical way to incorporate critical lessons from these unfortunate events. (shrink)