The publication of Harry Frankfurt’s 1986 essay “On Bullshit,” and especially its republication as a book in 2005, have sparked a great deal of interest in the philosophical analysis of the concept of bullshit. The present essay seeks to contribute to the ever-widening discussion of the concept by applying it to the realm of advertising. First, it is argued that Frankfurt’s definition of bullshit is too narrow, and an alternative definition is defended that accommodates both Frankfurt’s truth-indifferent bullshit and what is here termed “culpably confused bullshit.” Second, it is explained why a great deal of advertising constitutes bullshit so defined.The essay concludes by making the case that bullshitting in general is clearly unethical on both Utilitarian and Kantian grounds.

High ethical standards have always been at the core of the Afghan culture throughout the country. Unfortunately, over the past few years in Afghanistan, bribery and corruption have become more widespread throughout the government offices as employees attempt to serve their customers. This quantitative study of 98 male and 116 female Afghan-American respondents analyzes their perceptions regarding the recognition of dilemmas related to ethics and bribery. The 214Afghan-American responses are compared with the average scores of 602 American respondents from the retail industry. The groups’ scores are significantly different with the later reporting less tolerance for unethical behavior. It appears that there are no differences in the responses of Afghan males and females. The younger generation seems to be as ethically mature as the older Afghans. Finally, higher education levels among the Afghan respondents demonstrated a statistically significant and positive correlation toward ethical maturity. Results and implications are presented.

Ideological positions are often rooted in binary terms. If a group or entity holds one ideological position then it seems reasonable that they cannot hold the opposing position. This has resulted in a division between corporate public relations and grassroots movements who oppose practices they believe negatively impact society and the environment. However, what happens when corporations practice ideologically justified business decisions that were called upon by grassroots movements for change? What happens to suppliers and distributors who must operate under the demands of changing manufacturing and consumerbehaviors? This paper examines the blending of corporate commercial practice with social and environmental ethos that works to form commercial grassroots activism to positively impact manufacturing and purchasing behaviors.

This article examines the plight of the whistleblower using elements of organizational legitimacy theory. In recognizing the negative correlation between the actions of the organization and the whistleblower it becomes clear that the continuing legitimacy of the organization necessitates the illegitimacy of the whistleblower. This helps explain the continual blacklisting of the whistleblower and their vilification, resulting in the destruction of both their professional career and their reputation. Only protective legislation will provide any guarantees for the whistleblower.

The question may be asked why many workers are still being paid below subsistence wages and I believe the answer can be found in the confusion over what exactly constitutes a “living wage” and who has the duty to pay these wages. This article therefore clarifies what a living wage is and gives a concrete example of how a living wage can be calculated. To understand who has the obligation to pay living wages I look to the theory of Alan Gewirth on individual and institutional responsibility and the account of Robert Mayer on structural exploitation to argue that all parts of the supply chain have the duty. The final part of this paper willoutline the inclusion of a living wage calculation into corporate codes of conduct to ensure that workers at the end of the supply chain receive living wages.

Freedom to smoke is part and parcel of overall freedom. The former cannot be abrogated without violating the latter. The present paper applies this insight to the regulations placed on the tobacco industry and smoking in general. We find that government interventions into people’s lives regarding smoking are highly incompatible with libertarian principles. We examine many regulations such as prohibiting youths from smoking, preventing second hand smoke, restrictions on advertising, taxing the industry, and liability issues.

The study seeks to determine the influence of economic reward on unethical behavior with the help of a Reward Punishment Model. The model postulates that ethical or unethical behavior depends on the relationship among three factors: economic reward or benefit that a businessperson receives from the unethical practice, the severity of punishment the society imposes for such wrong-doing, and the probability of receiving the punishment. A short survey, which contained a hypothetical ethical situation, was administered to 251 respondents. The findings indicate that the probability of risk-taking decreases as the level of punishmentand the chance of being caught increases.

A firm’s enterprise strategy denotes what a firm stands for. Despite its importance, there has been little research on this topic. Furthermore, the theoretical bases underlying the existing approaches to enterprise strategy suffer from several limitations. In view of these shortcomings, this paper invokes Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach (SCA) and its notion of “justice as freedom” as a normative foundation of enterprise strategy. Toward this end, it integrates different streams in the stakeholder theory/business ethics and economics literature. It focuses on the stakeholder capability of “having a voice,” and the managerial capability of “using the knowledge to provide stakeholders a voice and freedom.”

In general, meaningful work has been conceived to be a matter of institutional obligation and individual choice. In other words, solong as the institution has fulfilled its objective moral obligation to make meaningful work possible, it is up to the subjective volition of the individual to choose or not to choose work that is perceived to be meaningful. However, this conception is incomplete in at least two ways. First, it neglects the role of institutional volition; that is, it does not emphasize enough that the institution’s purpose itself can be meaningful (or meaningless). Second, the standard conception of meaningful work says surprisingly little about the moral obligation of the individual—to anyone but the individual herself—to pursue meaningful work. The immediate and sustained responses to the September 11, 2001, attacks suggest that there is an important relationship between meaningful work and the moral worth of institutions and individuals. To explore that relationship, this paper examines stories of three jobs that tragically coincided on September 11, 2001: broker, firefighter, and terrorist.

In his classic paper, The Serpent Beguiled Me And I Did Eat, Gerald Dworkin makes the case that, without probable cause, the useof Proactive Law Enforcement Techniques (PALETs) is morally impermissible. Call this prohibition Dworkin’s Rule (DR). Here we argue that there are two reasonable exceptions to DR—the use of PALETs, without probable cause, is justifi ed when employed against High Level Government Officials (HLGOs) and High Level Business Officials (HLBOs). Moreover, these exceptions are consistent with Dworkin’s notion of Ideal Criminal Sanctioning. Finally, if society were to endorse the use of PALETs on HLBOs, we might be able to dispose of the current bane of American business, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and let business get back to the business of business.

This paper examines the international information technology (IT) sourcing decision from an ethical perspective. The internationalsourcing of IT activities, termed IT offshoring in this paper, has received considerable attention recently. Differing views on IT offshoring prevail, ranging from the protection view that IT offshoring steals jobs away from the domestic economy, to the market view that it creates jobs and improves the overall global economy through market efficiencies. Despite the large amount of material devoted to managing and evaluating the practice of IT offshoring, the ethical issues surrounding the decision has received little attention. This paper seeks to address that need, examining the IT offshoring decision through the application of a series of ethical frameworks. Several normative theories of ethics, including stockholder theory, stakeholder theory, social contract theory, utilitarianism, and a Kantian’ categorical imperative framework, are employed to gain insights into the ethical aspects of this practice. Our resulting framework represents an early attempt to examine the ethics of the IT offshoring and provides managers with practical guidelines and insights when addressing the IT offshoring decision.

This paper offers clarity regarding the convergence of two important issues in today’s business environment. First is the growingconcern over ethical failures of leadership. The obsessive self-interest and egoistic concern for personal gain exhibited by some corporate executives is particularly difficult to understand and overcome. Second is the growing realization that business must embrace the broad concept of personal spirituality. Moral reflection and choice are at the core of ethical leadership, and spiritual and moral development are interdependent. Personal spirituality impacts the leader’s moral stability by contributing to strength of character, reducing egoistic needs, providing means and motivation for true moral choices and actions, and creating a strong moral identity. Current theory and research on spiritual leadership fails to adequately portray the pivotal role of the leader’s personal spiritualtransformation and sense of spirituality in ethical decision-making.

This paper claims that health insurance is not a human right; that the reason the medical care industry is in such an unsatisfactorystate is that there is not enough competition in the field. To wit, there are government interferences on both the supply and demand sides of health care; the former in terms of restrictions on entry for physicians, the latter based on the moral hazard attendant on the subsidization of medicine.

This paper examines the phenomenon of moral luck and how it can effect professional practice. Using both Thomas Nagel’s and Bernard William’s exposition on moral luck, this paper first demonstrates the close relationship between moral luck and epistemic luck. Then, drawing on some of the lessons one might learn from the epistemologist’s treatment of epistemic luck, particularly in the debate between internalists and externalists in epistemology, strategies are developed that professionals and professional organizations might use to avoid and/or mitigate the problem moral luck presents to professional practice. Examples from various professions—the military, engineering, medicine, journalism, business—are use to illustrate both the problem of moral luck and the strategies useful in avoiding it.

This manuscript provides coverage of an inquiry into the depiction of the roles assumed by high school models in television commercials. Hypotheses propose that learning-related activities are less often presented than other activities and when presented tend to be less favorable than other activities. The study produces evidence to the effect that scholastic roles occupy a less important position and are less favorably depicted, as compared to other roles. However, a large proportion of the models in the advertisements were presented in a positive manner.

This article presents results from an empirical investigation of the role and importance of ethics in the daily work of Danish oncologyphysicians and Danish molecular biologists. The study is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with three groups of respondents: a group of oncology physicians working in a clinic at a public hospital and two groups of molecular biologists conducting basic research, one group employed at a public university and the other in a private biopharmaceutical company.We found that oncology physicians consider ethical evaluation as part of their daily work. They discuss how to treat patients in groups and they have interdisciplinary seminars. In contrast, molecular biologists employed at the university do not think that basic research causes significant ethical problems, they do not talk about ethics in their daily work and they do not want to prioritise seminars on ethics. Molecular biologists employed in a private biopharmaceutical company do not think that basic research causes significant ethical problems, but the private company prioritises ethical evaluation. If the company behaves unethical, they will be punished by the consumers and by the investors in the last end. In general, oncology physicians working in the clinic experience a closer relationship between their daily work and ethical problems concerning human beings than molecular biologists conducting basic research.

Downsizing is a process whereby human relations management emerges as a critical skill in its effective management. This paperis about perceptions of employees of a small-sized Turkish firm who survived successive downsizing decisions. It was found that downsizing affected the organizational justice-related perceptions of survivors. The questionnaire used to explore organizational justice-related perceptions involved three dimensions and was developed by Saunders and Thornhill (1999). Procedural, interactional and distributive justice-related perceptions of survivors were influenced by the way management handled the process. Management credibility, communication and commitment were other variables studied. The findings supported the view that downsizing not only affects the victims but also the survivors.