Firms possessing a unique competency to rescue the victims of a human catastrophe have a minimum moral obligation to devote substantial resources toward best efforts to aid the victims. The minimum amount that firms should devote to rescue is the largest sum of their most recent year’s investment in social initiatives, their five-year trend, their industry’s average, or the national average. Financial exigency may justify a lower level of investment. Alternative social investments may be continued if they have an equally (...) compelling rationale. These duties apply to the global pharmaceutical companies in the context of the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa. (shrink)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

Most people believe that there are limits to the sacrifices that morality can demand. Although it would often be meritorious, we are not, in fact, morally required to do all that we can to promote overall good. What's more, most people also believe that certain types of acts are simply forbidden, morally off limits, even when necessary for promoting the overall good. In this provocative analysis Kagan maintains that despite the intuitive appeal of these views, they cannot be adequately defended. (...) In criticizing arguments for limited moral requirements as well as those for unconditionally prohibited acts, Kagan offers a sustained attack on two of the most basic features of ordinary common sense morality. (shrink)

As I write this, in November 1971, people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical caxc. The suffering and death that are occurring there now axe not inevitable, 1101; unavoidable in any fatalistic sense of the term. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war have turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees; nevertheless, it is not beyond Lhe capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to (...) very small proportions. The decisions arid actions of human beings can prevent this kind of suffering. Unfortunately, human beings have not made the necessary decisions. At the individual level, people have, with very few exceptions, not responded to the situation in any signihczmt way. Generally speaking, people have not given large sums to relief funds; they have not written t0 their parliamentaxy representatives demanding increased government assistance; they have not demonstrated in the streets, held symbolic fasts, or done anything else directed toward providing thc refugees with the means to satisfy their essential needs. At thc government level, no govcrmmcnt has given the sort of massive aid that would enable the refugees to survive fm: more than a few days. Britain, for instance, has given rather more than most countries. It has, to date, given £14,750,000. For comparative purposes, B1~itain’s share of thc nonreccverabla development costs of the Anglo-French Concorde project is already in excess of £275,000,000, and on present estimates will reach £440,000,¤00. The implication is that the British government values a supersonic transport more than thirty times as.. (shrink)

We do not live in a just world. This may be the least controversial claim one could make in political theory. But it is much less clear what, if anything, justice on a world scale might mean, or what the hope for justice should lead us to want in the domain of international or global institutions, and in the policies of states that are in a position to affect the world order. By comparison with the perplexing and undeveloped state of (...) this subject, domestic political theory is very well understood, with multiple highly developed theories offering alternative solutions to well-defined problems. By contrast, concepts and theories of global justice are in the early stages of formation, and it is not clear what the main questions are, let alone the main possible answers. I believe that the need for workable ideas about the global or international case presents political theory with its most important current task, and even perhaps with the opportunity to make a practical contribution in the long run, though perhaps only the very long run. (shrink)

This chapter outlines the main ideas of my book National responsibility and global justice. It begins with two widely held but conflicting intuitions about what global justice might mean on the one hand, and what it means to be a member of a national community on the other. The first intuition tells us that global inequalities of the magnitude that currently exist are radically unjust, while the second intuition tells us that inequalities are both unavoidable and fair once national responsibility (...) is allowed to operate. This conflict might be resolved either by adopting a cosmopolitan theory of justice (which leaves no room for national responsibility) or by adopting a ?political? theory of justice (which denies that questions of distributive justice can arise beyond the walls of the sovereign state). Since neither resolution is satisfactory, the chapter defends the idea of national responsibility and proposes a new theory of global justice, whose main elements are the protection of basic human rights worldwide, and fair terms of interaction between independent political communities. (shrink)

The first edition was awarded the '2005 Textbook Award of the Association of University Professors of Management (Verband der Hochschullehrer fur ...

This study represents an improvement in the ethics scales inventory published in a 1988 Journal of Business Ethics article. The article presents the distillation and validation process whereby the original 33 item inventory was reduced to eight items. These eight items comprise the following ethical dimensions: a moral equity dimension, a relativism dimension, and a contractualism dimension. The multidimensional ethics scale demonstrates significant predictive ability.

This chapter outlines the main ideas of my book National responsibility and global justice. It begins with two widely held but conflicting intuitions about what global justice might mean on the one hand, and what it means to be a member of a national community on the other. The first intuition tells us that global inequalities of the magnitude that currently exist are radically unjust, while the second intuition tells us that inequalities are both unavoidable and fair once national responsibility (...) is allowed to operate. This conflict might be resolved either by adopting a cosmopolitan theory of justice (which leaves no room for national responsibility) or by adopting a ‘political’ theory of justice (which denies that questions of distributive justice can arise beyond the walls of the sovereign state). Since neither resolution is satisfactory, the chapter defends the idea of national responsibility and proposes a new theory of global justice, whose main elements are the protection of basic human rights worldwide, and fair terms of interaction between independent political communities. (shrink)

Critics attack normative ethical stakeholder theory for failing to recognize the special moral status of shareholders that justifiesthe fiduciary duties owed to them at law by managers. Stakeholder theorists reply that there is nothing morally significant about shareholders that can underwrite those fiduciary duties. I advance an argument that seeks to demonstrate both the special moral status of shareholders in a firm and the concomitant moral inadequacy of stakeholder theory. I argue that (i) if some relations morally requirefiduciary duties, and (...) (ii) the shareholder-manager relation possesses the features that make fiduciary duties morally necessary to thoserelations, then (iii) stakeholder theory is morally lacking. (shrink)

The strength of a slippery slope argument is a matter of some dispute. Some see it as a reasonable argument pointing out what probably or inevitably follows from adopting some practice, others see it as essentially a fallacious argument. However, there seems to be a tendency emerging to say that in many cases, the argument is not actually fallacious, although it may be unsubstantiated. I shall not try to settle this general discussion, but merely seek to assess the strength of (...) the slippery slope argument applied to human gene therapy. The structure of my argument will be the following. First, I shall distinguish between three different versions of the slippery slope argument; two logical versions and an empirical one. Next, I will address human gene therapy in terms of each of the three versions, partly relying on slippery slope arguments against this practice that have already surfaced in the literature. I shall argue that neither version pulls through. The logical versions fail primarily because relevant distinctions can be made between different uses of gene therapy, contrary to what the proponents of the arguments claim. The empirical version fails because there seems to be no evidence supporting the claim that we shall in fact slide down the slope if we engage in gene therapy, and because if we accepted the conclusion that we should not allow gene therapy on the basis of the empirical argument, we should have to make very far-reaching and undesirable modifications in health care in general, in order to be consistent. Or at least so I shall argue. (shrink)

The pharmaceutical industry has in recent years come under attack from an ethical point of view concerning its patents and thenon-accessibility of life-saving drugs for many of the poor both in less developed countries and in the United States. The industry has replied with economic and legal justifications for its actions. The result has been a communication gap between the industry on the one hand and poor nations and American critics on the other. This paper attempts to present and evaluate (...) the arguments on all sides and suggests a possible way out of the current impasse. It attempts to determine the ethical responsibility of the drug industry in making drugs available to the needy, while at the same time developing the parallel responsibilities of individuals, governments, and NGOs. It concludes with the suggestion that the industry develop an international code for its self-regulation. (shrink)

The current linkages between ethical theory and management behavior are investigated. The vignettes used in this investigation represent ethical dilemmas in the areas of coercion and control, conflict of interest, physical environment, and personal integrity. Overall, even with heightened ethical awareness the link between ethical philosophy and management behavior remains similar to that of the early 1990s. Generally, practitioners still rely heavily on the utilitarian ethical philosophy when making business decisions. However, more managers are now likely to select ethically appropriate (...) actions either because it is ethical to do so, or because the consequences or risk of not doing so are too great. This shift could positively impact the ethical climate of business decision-making. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the effects of different competitive conditions on the determination and evaluation of strategies of corporatesocial responsibility (CSR). Although the mainstream of current thinking in business ethics recognizes that a firm should invest in social responsibility, the normative theory on how specific competitive conditions affect a firm’s social responsibility remains underdeveloped. Intensity of competition, risks to reputation and the regulatory environment determine the competitive conditions of a firm. Our central thesis is that differential strength of competition (...) produces differential moral legitimacy of firm behavior. When competition is fierce or weak, different acts or strategies become morally acceptable, as well as economically rational. A firm has to develop its own strategy of social responsibility, in light of its competitive position, as well as ethical considerations. (shrink)

This study investigates current linkages between ethical theory and management behavior. The vignettes used in this investigation represent ethical dilemmas in the areas of coercion and control, conflict of interest, physical environment, and personal integrity. The results indicate that even with the heightened state of ethical awareness that has evolved in recent years the link between ethical philosophy and management behavior remains basically the same as it was in the mid 1980s. Specifically, practitioners still rely almost totally on the utilitarian (...) ethical philosophy when making business decisions. (shrink)