6 found
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  1. Ethics of the Attention Economy: The Problem of Social Media Addiction.Vikram R. Bhargava & Manuel Velasquez - 2021 - Business Ethics Quarterly 31 (3):321-359.
    Social media companies commonly design their platforms in a way that renders them addictive. Some governments have declared internet addiction a major public health concern, and the World Health Organization has characterized excessive internet use as a growing problem. Our article shows why scholars, policy makers, and the managers of social media companies should treat social media addiction as a serious moral problem. While the benefits of social media are not negligible, we argue that social media addiction raises unique ethical (...)
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  2. Firm Responses to Mass Outrage: Technology, Blame, and Employment.Vikram R. Bhargava - 2020 - Journal of Business Ethics 163 (3):379-400.
    When an employee’s off-duty conduct generates mass social media outrage, managers commonly respond by firing the employee. This, I argue, can be a mistake. The thesis I defend is the following: the fact that a firing would occur in a mass social media outrage context brought about by the employee’s off-duty conduct generates a strong ethical reason weighing against the act. In particular, it contributes to the firing constituting an inappropriate act of blame. Scholars who caution against firing an employee (...)
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    The Ethics of Employment-at-Will: An Institutional Complementarities Approach.Vikram R. Bhargava & Carson Young - 2022 - Business Ethics Quarterly 32 (4):519-545.
    Employment-at-will (EAW) is the legal presumption that employers and employees may terminate an employment relationship for any or no reason. Defenders of EAW have argued that it promotes autonomy and efficiency. Critics have argued that it allows for the domination, subordination, and arbitrary treatment of employees. We intervene in this debate by arguing that the case for EAW is contextual in a way that existing business ethics scholarship has not considered. In particular, we argue that the justifiability of EAW for (...)
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    Brand as Promise.Vikram R. Bhargava & Suneal Bedi - 2022 - Journal of Business Ethics 179 (3):919-936.
    Brands are widely regarded as a constellation of shared associations surrounding a company and its offerings. On the traditional view of brands, these associations are regarded as perceptions and attitudes in consumers’ minds in relation to a company. We argue that this traditional framing of brands faces an explanatory problem: the inability to satisfactorily explain why certain branding activism initiatives elicit the moralized reactive attitudes that are paradigmatic responses to wrongdoing. In this paper, we argue for a reframing of brands (...)
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    Autonomous Vehicles and the Ethics of Driving.Vikram R. Bhargava & Brian Berkey - 2024 - Social Theory and Practice 50 (2):179-206.
    In this paper, we argue that if a set of plausible conditions obtain, then driving a standard vehicle rather than riding in an autonomous vehicle (AV) will become analogous to driving drunk rather than driving sober, and therefore impermissible. In addition, we argue that a ban on the production, sale, and purchase of new standard vehicles would also become justified. We make this case in part by highlighting that the central reasons typically offered in support of state-mandated vaccination will also (...)
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  6. Hiring, Algorithms, and Choice: Why Interviews Still Matter.Vikram R. Bhargava & Pooria Assadi - 2024 - Business Ethics Quarterly 34 (2):201-230.
    Why do organizations conduct job interviews? The traditional view of interviewing holds that interviews are conducted, despite their steep costs, to predict a candidate’s future performance and fit. This view faces a twofold threat: the behavioral and algorithmic threats. Specifically, an overwhelming body of behavioral research suggests that we are bad at predicting performance and fit; furthermore, algorithms are already better than us at making these predictions in various domains. If the traditional view captures the whole story, then interviews seem (...)
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