Postdoctoral Associate Position in Business Ethics [For more information please see contact info below — please do not contact the editors of BEH!] The Institute for Ethical Leadership (IEL) at Rutgers Business School – Newark and New Brunswick invites applications for a Postdoctoral Associate Position funded by the Mark and Rosemary Carawan Fellowship in Business Ethics. This is a non-renewable two-year calendar year Post-doctoral Associate position in business ethics or leadership ethics. We seek applicants with a strong background in any area of business or leadership ethics, such as behavi ..read more

The piece linked below is about a new and problematic service being offered for sale: essays written by artificial intelligence. As the author points out, this means companies profiting from helping students cheat (and, we should add, helping them risk their academic careers). >>> LINK: Corporate A.I. Helping Students Cheat? (by Chris MacDonald for The Business Ethics Blog) With the advent of commercial A.I.-driven writing services, students now have a new tool with which to cheat. Of course, students have lots of tools (everything from using a friend’s essay from last year, to plagi ..read more

Voluntary sustainability certifications (that is, ones that lack the backing of law) are always interesting, and sometimes controversial. Some people argue that if they’re voluntary, they’re doomed to be ineffective. Others argue that it’s better if industries can figure out on their own how to set suitable goals and limits, and leave government out of the picture. The two articles linked below tackle some of that terrain. The first is a commentary on a book, and the second is a response by the book’s author. >>> Voluntary Sustainability Certifications: What is the Point?, by Elizabet ..read more

The article linked below starts out with an interesting question, but ends up with an odd answer. The author asks whether it’s ok to steal from big companies. She points out that stealing is generally bad, but that the (moral) rule against stealing is also generally thought to have exceptions. And, she suggests, one such exception might be when corporations aren’t holding up their end of the social bargain. If they’re acting badly towards us, then why shouldn’t we act badly towards them? In the end, the author suggests that we should adopt a different approach, instead of stealing from corpora ..read more

Some employers prefer that workers not unionize. Amazon is one of those. And they’re apparently kicking around an interesting tactic: promote an in-house messaging system for employees to use, but forbid the use of certain terms — terms like “union” and “representation” and “living wage.” In the piece linked below, Chris MacDonald (one of the Editors of BEH) discusses “Will Amazon Ban Ethics?” A new report from The Intercept suggests that a new in-house messaging app for Amazon employees could ban a long string of words, including “ethics.” Most of the words on the list are ones tha ..read more

In the opinion piece linked below, the author takes companies to task for the lack of precision, and downright silliness, that sometimes invades corporate attempts to state publicly what they stand for. The criticism in on-target, for sure. One quibble: the author occasionally refers to things like “respect and responsibility” as principles. Those aren’t principles. They’re values. From a technical point of view, values are abstract terms for things we happen to think are important — things like honesty, privacy, bravery, and so  on. Principles are rules (or proposed rules) that put ..read more

Marketing strategy, behavioral economics, and (perhaps) business ethics collide in “shrinkflation”: the not-new but recently much reported-on phenomenon of resizing product volume downward rather than raising prices on consumer products—particularly groceries. On one hand, it shouldn’t matter: whether a package in an existing size carries a higher price or is downsized while carrying the same price as the earlier, larger size, you pay more (per ounce, per pound, per paper towel sheet) either way. On the other hand, the propensity of consumer product companies to opt for same-price/smalle ..read more

The item below contrasts the NBA’s original conservative approach to managing their little corner of the Covid-19 pandemic with the approach the league is taking this year. It’s worth knowing that the National Basketball Association is an odd sort of entity, legally speaking. Its own constitution stats that the Association is a contract among members (i.e., among team owners). The term “contract” implies a clear, arm’s-length business relationship. But the Association is also, well, an association, which implies a closer relationship, more like a (legal) partnership. So is there a “t ..read more

A government minister in Ireland is suggesting that pharma company GSK should make reparation payments to the families of individuals who were subject to unethical research practices in a series of vaccine trials conducted between 1922 and the late 20th century. This raises a couple of interesting questions about corporate identity and responsibility. For one thing, the trials weren’t conducted by GSK, because GSK as such didn’t come into existence until the year 2000 (through a merger between of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham). Legally speaking (though we are not lawyers) GSK likely in ..read more

Here’s a fascinating study that looks at the long-term pattern of ethical/legal violations by big pharmaceutical companies. The study, by Denis Arnold and colleagues (at the Belk College of Business at UNC Charlotte), covers the period 2003 to 2016. The study’s findings are powerful. Findings included that the “combined dollar value of financial penalties totaled $33 billion for 2003 to 2016.” Also interesting: “Four firms were not found to have penalties for illegal activities during the sample period.” What does the latter mean? The authors admit that there’s more than one possible explanati ..read more