Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

Pedagogical Strategies For Teaching Moral Minimalism, Richard Mcgowan

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

In 1986, Stephen Satris’s article, "Student Relativism," means to "offer analysis of, and suggest some methods for dealing with, a quite particular and peculiar problem in teaching philosophy…I speak of the problem of student relativism." (Satris, 1986, p. 193) The problem has not gone away.

However, psychological research suggests that the problem of relativism, a problem especially critical for teaching business ethics (or any other class in applied philosophy) is not insolvable. This paper, extending earlier work by R. McGowan, provides a brief account of research by Lawrence Kohlberg and William Perry on the structure of thought exhibited by students, …

Trade Usage And Disclaiming Consequential Damages: The Implications For Just-In-Time Purchasing, Robert B. Bennett

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

This article reports on trade, business, and industries in Japan in 2009. The article discusses industrial changes and growth in Japan, noting aspects of manufacturing such as marketing, purchasing, accounting, and human resources management. The article also describes the production management technique Just-In-Time (JIT) which emphasizes demand, limited production runs, quick setup, quality control, and reduced inventory and waste. Information is also provided on supply contracts, damages, lawsuits, and appeals.

The Apollo Fallacy And Its Effect On U.S. Energy Policy, Peter Z. Grossman

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

US Policy makers have made continual references to the Apollo Program as a model for development of alternative energy technologies. This model, however, is inappropriate for energy policy, and its use is termed the Apollo fallacy. The goal of the Apollo Program was the demonstration of engineering prowess while any alternative energy technology must succeed in the marketplace. Several Apollo-like energy programs have been tried and all have failed at high cost. It is argued that the use of Apollo has political benefits but that it is detrimental to the adoption of potentially effective energy policies.

Institutions Matter: Why The Herder Problem Is Not A Prisoner's Dilemma, Daniel H. C., Peter Z. Grossman

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

In the game theory literature, Garrett Hardin’s famous allegory of the “tragedy of the commons” has been modeled as a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, labeled the Herder Problem (or, sometimes, the Commons Dilemma). This brief paper argues that important differences in the institutional structures of the standard Prisoner’s Dilemma and Herder Problem render the two games different in kind. Specifically, institutional impediments to communication and cooperation that ensure a dominant strategy of defection in the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma are absent in the Herder Problem. Their absence does not ensure that players will achieve a welfare-enhancing, cooperative solution to the …

The Impact Of The Repeal Of The Stock-For-Debt Exception On Corporate Bankruptcy Restructurings, William D. Terando, Wayne H. Shaw

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

This paper investigates the effect repeal of the stock-for-debt exception on corporate bankruptcy restructurings. This exception permitted corporations to exclude cancellation of indebtedness income from gross income provided they exchanged their own common equity for debt while in Chapter 11. Consistent with claims made by Easton (1994), it is found that the change in tax law imposed significant explicit tax costs on bankruptcy filers. Despite these costs, it is found that many of these firms altered their debt restructure method to preserve net operating losses and reduce their cost of equity. Almost half of the sample firms issued significant levels …

Legal History Meets The Honors Program, Robert B. Bennett

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

In this article, the author discusses the "Law and Culture" course that he developed to teach in the Butler University Honors Program. The course looks at some landmark periods or events in legal history and explores how those events were the product of their culture, and how they affected their culture. Among the events or periods that the author has looked at in iterations of this course were the survival instinct on display in "Regina v. Dudley and Stephens," the Nuremberg trials, the Scopes Monkey Trial, the modern American litigation explosion, and the events surrounding the U.S. Supreme Court decision …

The Psychological Foundation For An Integrated Course In Law And Ethics, Richard Mcgowan

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Centuries ago, Thomas Aquinas noted that “human reason must proceed from the precepts of the natural law as from certain common and indispensable principles to other more particular dispositions” (ST I-II, 91, 3) He said that “because of the uncertainty of human judgment, especially in contingent and particular matters, it happens that different decisions are made about different human acts so that laws are often divergent and even contradictory.” (91, 4) To the casual reader, Thomas might be endorsing a position akin to ethical relativism but Thomas finds little to endorse about that position: “the truth is the same for …

Toward A Total-Cost Approach To Environmental Instrument Choice, Daniel H. Cole, Peter Z. Grossman

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Much of the theoretical literature on environmental instrument reflects a normative presumption that only "economic" instruments, such as effluent taxes or tradable quotas, can produce an efficient outcome. Other potential alternatives, such as non-tradable quotas or more general Pigovian taxes are ruled out as inherently inefficient. Moreover, most of the literature relies on an important but unwarranted presumption: that cost and benefit functions, although they may be subject to uncertainty, are identical regardless of the regime that is chosen; that is price and quota systems are assumed to face the same cost and benefit curves with the same expected values. …

The Meaning Of Property Rights: Law Versus Economics? , Daniel H. Cole, Peter Z. Grossman

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Property rights are fundamentals to economic analysis. There is, however, no consensus in the economic literature about what property rights are. Economists define them variously and inconsistently, sometimes in ways that deviate from the conventional understandings of legal scholars and judges. This article explores ways in which definitions of property rights in the economic literature diverge from conventional legal understandings, and how those divergences can create interdisciplinary confusion and bias economic analyses. Indeed, some economists' idiosyncratic definitions of property rights, if used to guide policy, could lead to suboptimal economic outcomes.

Understanding Research On Values In Business: A Level Of Analysis Framework, Bradley R. Agle, Craig B. Caldwell

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Researchers in all management specialties have discussed and investigated the important role values play in personal and organizational phenomena. However, because research on values has been performed in a wide range of social science disciplines and at different levels of analysis, much of thiswork has been uninformed by other work and is neither well integrated nor systematized, resulting in a great deal of confusion concerning the topic. This article attempts to add order and clarity to this area of research by proposing a framework of values research based on level of analysis and by cataloguing and reviewing the vast theoretical …

Accountants’ Liability To Third Parties For Negligent Misrepresentation: The Search For A New Limiting Principle, J. H. Leibman, Anne Kelly

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Examines the liability of accountants in the United States to third parties for negligent misrepresentation.

Industry Self-Regulation: An Economic, Organizational, And Political Analysis, Lawrence J. Lad, Anil K. Gupta

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Researchers generally have viewed nonmarket regulation of firm behavior as synonymous with direct regulation by the government. This paper highlights industry self-regulation as an alternative form of nonmarket regulation that, depending on the context, may supplement or complement direct regulation by the government. Further, on the basis of exploratory economic, organizational, and political analysis, it advances, for possible future research, propositions relating to the existence, operation, and out-come of industry self-regulation.