Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

Mental Models That Impede Business’ Role In Global Poverty Alleviation, Dennis Moberg, Laura Hartman, Patricia Werhane, Scott Kelley

Scott Kelley

Six defective mental models that obstruct multinational enterprises from efforts at global poverty alleviation are identified. These include mindsets that define poverty in terms of individual daily earnings, that contend that global poverty is unsolvable, and frame global poverty as a human rights issue. In addition, there are the biased mental models that contend that the poor are incapable, that making money from the poor is unseemly, and that partnerships between multinational enterprises and public organizations are unlikely. It is claimed that such mental models challenge business leaders to be morally imaginative, and specific examples are cited that dispute each …