Moral education as practiced in schools today roughly falls into two kinds, either taught as an independent subject or practiced as a form of school-wide social learning. Dewey’s criticism of rigid moral training in traditional schools gives credence to the latter trend. For instance, in 2000 Taiwan’s Ministry of Education decided to eliminate moral education as a required subject from the national school curriculum and suggested that all schools and teachers should infuse morality into the school culture as a whole. (...) More than a decade has passed, and many people question whether schools have been infused with morality. Some even suggest that not teaching morality in schools has led to an eroding of moral standards in society at large. In light of this controversy, in this paper, I take a close look at Dewey’s conception of the nature of morality, and in particular, his distinction between reflective and customary morality. Drawing on Dewey’s own moral struggles in life to illustrate his major contentions, I explore what Dewey means by moral reflection, dramatic rehearsal, and growth. Finally, I argue for the importance of committed moral values as the foundation for realizing Dewey’s ideal of reflective intelligence. Overall, I aim to unpack the underlying assumptions in Dewey’s ideas in order to renew his lessons for moral education today. (shrink)

This paper wishes to problematize the foundations of production governance and offer an analytical perspective on the interrelation between agents’ preferences, strategic choice, and the public sphere . The value is in the idea of preferences being social in nature and in the application both to the internal stakeholders of the organisation and its impacts on people outside. Using the concept of ‘strategic failure’ we suggest that social preferences reflected in deliberative social praxis can reduce false beliefs and increase individual (...) wellbeing. From this approach, the paper offers a taxonomy of production organisations, based on social preferences about two variables: the governance form other strategic decisions that characterize the management of a company at a more operational level, once its fundamental legal form has been chosen. Each dimension is then categorised alongside two basic preferences: towards inclusion or exclusion of ‘publics’ that have no substantial access to decision power about these variables. Our framework explains governance heterogeneity by contrasting exclusive and inclusive social preferences in cooperatives, social enterprises, as well as traditional corporations. A discussion of the evolution of social preferences and organizational forms is addressed through examples and regional experiences. (shrink)

In a world of glossy corporate social responsibility reports, the shallowness of the actual CSR results may well be its counterpart. We claim that the possible gaps between aspirations and implementations are due to the company's overrating abilities to deal with the irrational and complex moral world of business. Many academic approaches aim to lift business ethics up to a higher level by enhancing competences but will fail because they are too rationalistic and generalistic to match the pluralistic and situational (...) practice constituted by the mosaic of values and set of constraints. This is demonstrated by describing and analyzing the CSR development of the multinational caterer Sodexo and in particular its Dutch branch. We explain what they do and why they are not successful. We present a new tool named Ethical Room for Maneuver that centers experiences and concrete situations in a playground of inquiry and experiment to enhance abilities to operate in themoral world and to meliorate business and society with more effectiveness. (shrink)

Business research and teaching institutions play an important role in shaping the way businesses perceive their relations to the broader society and its moral expectations. Hence, as ethical scandals recently arose in the business world, questions related to the civic responsibilities of business scholars and to the role business schools play in society have gained wider interest. In this article, I argue that these ethical shortcomings are at least partly resulting from the mainstream business model with its taken-for granted basic (...) assumptions such as specialization or the value-neutrality of business research. Redefining the roles and civic responsibilities of business scholars for business practice implies therefore a thorough analysis of these assumptions if not their redefinition. The takenforgrantedness of the mainstream business model is questioned by the transformation of the societal context in which business activities are embedded. Its value-neutrality in turn is challenged by self-fulfilling prophecy effects, which highlight the normative influence of business schools. In order to critically discuss some basic assumptions of mainstream business theory, I propose to draw parallels with the corporate citizenship concept and the stakeholder theory. Their integrated approach of the relation between business practice and the broader society provides interesting insights for the social reembedding of business research and teaching. (shrink)

The existence of a plurality of communities, a diversity of norms, and the ultimate contingency of all decisions in modern societies complicates the task of academics and practitioners who wish to be ethical. In this paper, we envisage and articulate a dialogical, communitarian approach to embedding business ethics that requires business ethicists to more reflexively engage with practitioners in working on and representing the normative criteria that people in organisations use to deal with moral dilemmas in business. We promote the (...) idea that business ethicists should not only cross the divide between normative ethics and empirical research, but also take a step beyond the empirical to become more active change agents. As potential exemplars of this approach in practice, we explore how self-critique and cross-disciplinary collaboration in education and teaching might be used by academics to engage current and future business ethicists, as well as managers, in dialogic partnership. In an organisational context, we also propose a three-part approach to embedding reflexive ethics in practice, through dialogic research, debate, and re-presentation of ideas. We contend that our approach has more efficacy than the traditional grand theories of ethics or more focused theories of business ethics, such as Integrated Social Contract Theory; it has the potential to provide more grounded, and therefore more practical, advice to academics, current and future business ethicists, and business practitioners. (shrink)

Again and again utopian hopes are connected with the life sciences (no hunger, health for everyone; life without diseases, longevity), but simultaneously serious research shows uncertain, incoherent, and ambivalent results. It is unrealistic to expect that these uncertainties will disappear. We start by providing a not exhaustive list of five different types of uncertainties end-users of nutrigenomics have to cope with without being able to perceive them as risks and to subject them to risk-analysis. First, genes connected with the human (...) body or nutrients can have different functions in interaction with their environment (for instance, one nutrient can be healthy for the heart, but can also be a high risk in relation to cancer). Secondly, uncertainties are formed by risk analyses. Will it be possible to calculate a certain risk of getting a certain condition with a certain lifestyle? Will it be difficult to separate the genetic component and the lifestyle component? How high will these risks be? How will these risks be handled by the actors? In the case of personal genotyping, it is unclear how frequent an adverse polymorphism will occur. Will every individual have a certain vulnerability to a certain disease or will it only be applicable to a small group of the population or particular populations? Thirdly, dietary advices are subject to uncertainties and still to be developed professional standards: some will have adverse outcomes, some will not delay the disease, and some will assume uncertain associations between nutrients, lifestyle, and genetic vulnerabilities. Fourth, with regard to the usefulness of tests it is uncertain to what extent risks indications about obesity and diabetes and other vulnerabilities really influence people to live healthier and therefore will help to prevent these conditions. Fifth, it is uncertain how and what nutrigenomics products will be developed and used. Will it be possible to develop more effectively health improving products? Or is this too difficult and will nutrigenomics continue to be used in not always justified health claims as a commercial and marketing tool? Present-day ethics and theories of responsibilities presuppose that uncertainties will disappear and concentrate on what seems to be fixed and stable in science. We develop provisional thoughts that assume that the dynamic of science to produce uncertainties and dilemmas is endemic, and we stress the need for consumers to institutionalize value searching, exploring, and deliberating devices in the health and food sector to find out the most important uncertainties and correspondingly socially desirable research priorities. (shrink)

In this paper, we review two seemingly unrelated debates. In business ethics, the argument is about values: are they universal or emergent? In entrepreneurship, it is about opportunities – are they discovered or constructed? In reality, these debates are similar as they both overlook contingency. We draw insight from pragmatism to define contingency as possibility without necessity. We analyze real-life narratives and show how entrepreneurship and ethics emerge from our discussion as parallel streams of thought.

As integrators of talents, Catholic family business leaders are strategically positioned to leverage the unique differences of their workforce. Business literature currently emphasizes participatory leadership as best practice. Participatory leadership is insufficient, however, because increasing the number of voices in the decision-making process may lead to higher levels of conflict or disengagement if the voices are disregarded. This paper proposes that the Catholic Social Teaching concepts of subsidiarity and solidarity provide the guiding principles to integrate participation because together they can (...) account for all stakeholders while advancing business goals. To operationalize these principles, this paper suggests that the dispute resolution field has developed analytical frameworks to assess and reimagine current policies, procedures, and culture for dispute resolution and shared decision making. Ultimately, businesses are the training ground to prepare citizens to participate in the public square and contribute to the common good. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that if we challenge some tacit assumptions of narrow rationality that endure in much of entrepreneurial studies, we can elevate entrepreneurial ethics beyond mere external constraints on rational action, and move toward fuller integration of ethics as an intrinsic part of the process of value creation itself. To this end, I propose the concept of practical wisdom as a framework for exploring entrepreneurial decision making and action that can broaden the scope of our research to (...) recognize entrepreneurship as an inherendy normative enterprise. Specifically, I suggest that a framework built upon a concept of practical wisdom enables us to adopt a richer and more complex view of entrepreneurial decision making that is well suited to the dynamic and uncertain context of entrepreneurship. Further, this framework enriches our view of entrepreneurial ethics to include consideration of the personal character, values, and purpose of the entrepreneur. By examining entrepreneurship through a lens of practical wisdom, we can open up new avenues of fruitful inquiry for scholars of entrepreneurship. (shrink)