Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

Uncovering The Dirty Secrets Of A Food Paradise: Young Journalists Go Undercover, Estelle Low, Miak Aw

Social Space

Singapore is universally known as a food paradise, but far less is known about the enormous amount of waste generated daily by individuals, supermarkets, food outlets and hotels. 20-something investigative journalists Miak Aw and Estelle Low go undercover to shed light on how much we waste as a nation and why this needs to change.

Storytellers As Philanthropic Champions: An Interview With Claire Chiang, Lien Centre For Social Innovation

Social Space

Singapore’s charity sector is undergoing significant changes to enhance management quality, accountability and transparency. But despite these positive changes, Ms Claire Chiang, entrepreneur and philanthropist, argues that Singapore also needs to cultivate a more visionary and global approach to philanthropy. She shares with Social Space her thoughts on storytelling and the need for mentors to champion the most urgent causes of the day.

Contextualising Csr: Multi-Stakeholder Approaches To Development Initiatives In Southeast Asia, Christine Davis, Stephanie Soderborg

Social Space

As the focus on CSR expands throughout Asia, discussion prevails about the form it needs to take to be germane to the needs of each respective country. The authors discuss Kenan Institute Asia’s efforts in developing a responsible management education (or CSR curriculum and training) for future managers and business leaders in Vietnam.

Business Ethics And (Or As) Political Philosophy, Jeffrey Moriarty, Wayne Norman, Joseph Heath

Philosophy Faculty Publications

There is considerable overlap between the interests of business ethicists and those of political philosophers. Questions about the moral justifiability of the capitalist system, the basis of property rights, and the problem of inequality in the distribution of income have been of central importance in both fields. However, political philosophers have developed, especially over the past four decades, a set of tools and concepts for addressing these questions that are in many ways quite distinctive. Most business ethicists, on the other hand, consider their field to be primarily a domain of applied ethics, and so adopt methods and conceptual frameworks …

Participation In The Workplace: Are Employees Special?, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

I consider two influential arguments for employee participation in firm decision making: what I call the “interest protection argument” and the “autonomy argument.” I argue that the case for granting participation rights to some other stakeholders, such as suppliers and community members, is at least as strong, according to the reasons given in these arguments, as the case for granting them to certain employees. I then consider how proponents of these arguments might modify their arguments, or views, in response to this conclusion.

Business Solutions To Global Challenges, Richard Welford

Social Space

Despite the prevalence of CSR initiatives in companies, there is a need to leverage on current practices to make them more effective and meaningful. Richard Welford looks at the advantages to such an approach.

Dimensionality Of Business Ethics In China, Marc Sardy, J. Mark Munoz, James Jianmin Sun, Ilan Alon

Faculty Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the ethical dimensions in China. It reviews the extant business ethics literature on China, collects data on ethical conduct from a large Chinese university, and analyzes the data to examine emerging trends. Design/methodology/approach – Factor analysis and multidimensional scaling (MDS) are applied to an established survey instrument after reliability is confirmed. Findings – Principal-components factor analysis uncovers six main factors. MDS further reduces the explanatory variables into four ethical dimensions, while increasing the number of useable observations. These four dimensions are then correlated with some demographic and psychographic variables. Results …

Usage Of Public Corporate Communications Of Social Responsibility Within Brazil, Russia, India And China (Bric), Ilan Alon, Christopher Lattemann, Marc Fetscherin, Shaomin Li, Anna-Maria Schneider

Faculty Publications

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to analyze the status of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) communications in BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). The four countries are among the biggest emerging markets, forecasted to have increasing influence in economic and political spheres. How these countries manage their corporate communication in regards to CSR is, thus, the focus of our investigation. Design/methodology/approach: This paper compares the extent and content of corporate communication with respect to CSR from a sample of over 100 companies from the BRIC nations by investigating the nature of CSR motives, processes, and stakeholder. Findings: The …

Western Kentucky University Annual Report 2010: Bridging The Gap

SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise)

No abstract provided.

Understanding Mortality Rates Of Laying Hens In Cage-Free Egg Production Systems, The Humane Society Of The United States

Agribusiness Collection

In cage-free egg production systems, concerns have been raised over hen mortality rates. High mortality is an obvious indicator of poor welfare, and problems should be addressed without delay. It is important to note, however, that mortality can vary substantially between hen flocks, and that some cage-free systems have healthy flocks that do not suffer substantial death losses. These systems can serve as models for the rest of the industry, since mortality is not inherent to any particular system, but a consequence of how well the system is managed.

Missouri’S Dirty Dozen: A Report On Some Of The Worst Puppy Mills In Missouri, The Humane Society Of The United States

PUPPY MILL INFORMATION

The purpose of the report is to demonstrate current problems that could be addressed by the passage of Proposition B, which Missouri citizens will vote on in November. Under Proposition B, the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, many of these dealers’ horrific violations would be backed by stronger enforcement opportunities.

All of the puppy mills on the Dirty Dozen list are licensed by the USDA, the state, or both, according to the most recently available records reviewed by HSUS researchers. Some sell puppies to pet stores and others over the Internet. One thing they have in common is atrocious violations …

Managing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Risks Of Gift, Travel And Entertainment Expenditures, Karl Boedecker

Economics, Law, and International Business

Significant increases in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement activities have heightened the legal risks associated with giving gifts or paying travel and entertainment expenses for U.S. firms when promoting their goods or services in foreign markets. This change in the external environment necessitates appropriate strategic adjustments and managerial actions. The lack of specific standards of conduct under the FCPA’s general prohibitions requires that U.S. firms closely monitor the increasing number of investigations and legal actions initiated by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Discovering The Asian Form Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Bindu Sharma

Social Space

This article is part of an on-going research project that will look at the how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is being re-contextualised and re-defined in ten countries across Asia and how these perspectives contrast with the discourse of CSR in global (primarily Western) multinational corporations.

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

Mission and Ministry Publications

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 …

A Social Movement Perspective On Finance: How Socially Responsible Investment Mattered, Diane-Laure Arjaliès

Business Publications

This study discusses how social movements can influence economic systems. Employing a political–cultural approach to markets, it purports that ‘compromise movements’ can help change existing institutions by proposing new ones. This study argues in favor of the role of social movements in reforming economic institutions. More precisely, Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) movements can help bring SRI concerns into financial institutions. A study of how the French SRI movement has been able to change entrenched institutional logics of the French asset management sector provides wide-ranging support for these arguments. Empirical findings are drawn from a longitudinal case study (1997–2009), based on …

Emotional Intelligence And Cognitive Moral Development In Undergraduate Business Students, Elizabeth Pluskwik

Integrated Engineering Department Publications

This study examines relationships between emotional intelligence (EI) and cognitive moral development (CMD) in undergraduate business students. The ability model of emotional intelligence was used in this study, which evaluated possible relationships between EI and CMD in a sample of 82 undergraduate business students. The sample population was approximately 700 students in a private university in the Midwest United States. A weak, positive relationship was found between overall emotional intelligence and moral development, but the strength of this relationship failed to reach statistical significance. However, one branch of EI, Understanding Emotions, did have a positive correlation with moral development at …

See No Evil? Revisiting Early Visions Of The Social Responsibility Of Business: Adolf A. Berle’S Contribution To Contemporary Conversations, Erika George

Seattle University Law Review

Much corporate legal scholarship considers such fact patterns as beyond the scope of the discipline’s core concerns. Yet, increasingly, questions are asked concerning the scale and scope of modern corporate power. This Article will challenge the conventional understanding of what the core discipline of corporate law should encompass and argues that the failure to focus on precisely these sorts of factual scenarios involving allegations of corporate complicity in human rights violations and environmental degradation is misguided and short-sighted.

Neo-Brandeisianism And The New Deal: Adolf A. Berle, Jr., William O. Douglas, And The Problem Of Corporate Finance In The 1930s, Jessica Wang

Seattle University Law Review

This essay revisits Adolf A. Berle, Jr. and The Modern Corporation and Private Property by focusing on the triangle of Berle, Louis D. Brandeis, and William O. Douglas in order to examine some of the underlying assumptions about law, economics, and the nature of modern society behind securities regulation and corporate finance in the 1930s. I explore Douglas and Berle’s academic and political relationship, the conceptual underpinnings of Brandeis, Berle, and Douglas’s critiques of modern finance, and the ways in which the two younger men—Berle and Douglas—ultimately departed from their role model, Brandeis.

Foreword: In Berle’S Footsteps, Charles R.T. O'Kelley

Seattle University Law Review

On the weekend of November 6–8, 2009, scholars from around the world gathered in Seattle for a symposium—In Berle’s Footsteps—celebrating the launch of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. As founding director of the Berle Center, I described our undertaking: “It is with a profound sense of obligation to the legacy that has been entrusted to my care, that I announce the launching of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. It is a privilege to follow in Berle’s footsteps.”

Opening Remarks, Chancellor William B. Chandler Iii

Seattle University Law Review

Law is, in many ways, a backwards-looking field. We litigate over facts that have already occurred, challenge deals that have already been signed, and apply rules of decision based on previously-established precedent or statutes already enacted. To the extent that this Center and the symposium reflect on Berle’s work, they too are an exercise in looking back. Indeed, some might say the establishment of a Center named in Berle’s honor is a monument to the past.

Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure, Kelli A. Alces

Seattle University Law Review

Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means painted what remains a defining portrait of corporate law. The separation of ownership and control they described and the agency costs it causes are still a central concern of the law of corporate governance. For that reason, Berle’s work is relevant nearly eighty years after its publication. Seemingly forgotten, however, is that Berle’s enduring description of the corporate structure was published before most of today’s corporate law was in place. His work preceded the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and even preceded the dominance of Delaware common law in …

Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, And The Derivatives Revolution, Cristie Ford, Carol Liao

Seattle University Law Review

We are in a time when the notion of property is in flux. The derivatives revolution has shattered the “atom of property” well beyond what was originally imagined in 1932 by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means. This disaggregation has had fascinating, and often adverse, effects on corporate law and securities regulation. Moreover, the phenomenon has had the unexpected effect of permitting some parties that already possess considerable social, economic, and political power to accumulate even more.

The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control, Tamar Frankel

Seattle University Law Review

In The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner Means wrote about the separation of ownership from control in corporations. They noted that the interests of the controlling directors and managers can diverge from those of the shareholder owners of the firm. . . . There are those who consider such a decoupling beneficial. Others express the same concern that Berle and Means have expressed. And depending on what one focuses on in viewing the pluses and minuses of these separations, one could reach different conclusions. I reach a number of conclusions. First, the separation of …

Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill

Seattle University Law Review

Shareholders, and the relationship between shareholders and management, lay at the heart of Professor Berle’s scholarship. The goal of this Article is to compare the image of shareholders emerging from The Modern Corporation and Private Property and the Berle/Dodd debate with a range of contemporary visions of the shareholder that underpin some international regulatory responses to recent financial debacles, from Enron to the current global financial crisis. As the Article dis- cusses, these recent developments in the era of financial crises have prompted a reevaluation of the traditional image of the shareholder—and the role of the shareholder in the modern …

Berle And The Entrepreneur, Charles R.T. O'Kelley

Seattle University Law Review

In the first and last four chapters (“the Five Chapters”) of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf Berle, Jr. describes in sweeping terms a fundamental transformation of the American economy. . . . Writing more than ten years before Berle, another seminal scholar, Frank Knight . . . developed a theory of the entrepreneur as part of his larger effort to more carefully explain the theoretical underpinnings of a free-market economy. . . . Given Knight’s prominence and the fact that Knight apparently reached dramatically different conclusions than did Berle concerning the consequences flowing from separation of ownership …

The Birth Of Corporate Governance, Harwell Wells

Seattle University Law Review

Part I of this Article briefly examines the concept of “corporate governance” and argues for dating the concept’s origins to the debates of the 1920s. Part II then moves on to examine early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control. After surveying the historical developments that produced the recognizably modern corporate economy around the turn of the century, it examines early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control, focusing on three major thinkers, Louis D. Brandeis, Walter Lippmann, and Thorstein Veblen. It argues that, while each of these authors examined the separation …

Country Natural Beef: A Maturing Co-Op At The Crossroads, Madeleine E. Pullman, Victoria Villa-Lobos, Zhaohui Wu

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

A Business Base Study of a Group of Northwest Cattle Ranchers that Formed a Co-op to Market Natural Beef Products, in the Face of economic uncertainty and the rise of corporate farms and ranches. Provides an overview of the cattle ranching industry, the history of the co-op, its economic outlook, and future challenges.

Exploring Sustainability Practices And Reporting At Musgrave Group: A Case Study Of An Irish Private Company., Rebecca Maughan, Brendan O'Dwyer

Conference papers

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a case study of a large Irish company, Musgrave Group, which has been engaged in sustainability practices and reporting since the late 1990s. In doing so the paper provides an in-depth account firstly of the internal motivations for the company’s engagement with sustainability practices and reporting and secondly of the process through which the sustainability practice gained internal support and began to be integrated into the day to day activities of the company. The case study of the company involved a series of interviews with key participants in the …

Faith-Based Entrepreneurship, M. Yaqub Mirza, Miles K. Davis

New England Journal of Entrepreneurship

Interview of M. Yaqub Mirza by Miles K. Davis. Dr. Mirza attributes both his personal and business success to following Islamic principles.This interview outlines the Islamic principles he uses to guide his investment in new ventures and how those same principles shape his management style and attitude toward corporate social responsibility.

Legal And Ethical Issues Associated With Employee Use Of Social Networks, Gundars Kaupins, Susan Park

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter can help employees enhance a company’s marketing, recruiting, security, and safety. However, employee’s use of social networking sites and employers’ access of those sites can result in illegal and unethical behavior, such as discrimination and privacy invasions. Companies must gauge whether and how to rely upon employees’ use of personal social networking sites and how much freedom employees should have in using networks inside and outside of the companies. This research summarizes the latest legal and ethical issues regarding employee use of social networks and provides recommended corporate policies.