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Why Teaching Workplace Ethics Is Not As Hard As You Thought
This presentation for the Illinois Vocational Education Coordinators Association is in three parts. The first seeks to make it easier for you to teach workplace ethics by freeing you from what the author calls "the four fears", namely the fear of not being value neutral, the fear of subjectivism, the fear of relativism, and the fear of impotence. After addressing these fears, Part II presents a classroom situation win which you could discuss workplace ethics, and some suggestions on teaching methods., Sponsorship: Illinois Cooperative Vocational Education Coordinators Association, Mini-Seminar for the Illinois Cooperative Vocational Education Coordinators Association. Naperville Central High School, Naperville, Illinois. 19 May 1988, 1-5 pm.
Technology, Values, and Ethics : A Framework
Three words of my title--"technology", "values", and "ethics"--have this in common: they have all been used in enough different ways to be dangerous. To provide the framework my title promises, I shall have to distinguish the most important of those uses, set them in context, and explain how they are (or are not) related. This conceptual housecleaning, rather boring in itself, will give me the opportunity to talk about engineering, both its history and practice. That will not be boring., GTE Lecture University of Wisconsin Center/Fond du Lac October 13, 199
The Moral Legislature
This paper is an experiment in what John Rawls recently called "Kantian constructiivism". It seeks to establish a "suitable connection between a particular conception of the person and first principles of [morality] by means of a procedure of construction. Yet, it differs from Rawls' similar efforts in a number of ways. The emphasis is morality generally, not justice in particular. The construction attempts to be more "realistic" especially in substituting external procedures for Rawls' "veil of ignorance". These differences are, I hope, at least suggested by substituting "the moral legislature" for Rawls' "original position". Section I of this paper explains further what motivates the sort of construction proposed, sections II-V describe the moral legislature itself, explaining as well why it makes sense to construct it as I do and how it differs from some obvious alternatives. Section VI concludes with an example of how the moral legislature might be used, the sketch of an argument for the claim that positive law cannot in in generally be morally obliging.
Conflict of Interest : What's to Worry?
Michael Green's "Culture, Self, and Ethical Paradigms" is a daring paper. Though we must finally reject its argument and suspend judgement on its conclusions, it has much to teach us about the possible relationships between business ethics and surrounding culture., Presentation given at Holland Laboratory, Rockville, Maryland, May 10, 1994.
Culture, Social Psychology, and Business Ethics
Michael Green's "Culture, Self, and Ethical Paradigms" is a daring paper. Though we must finally reject its argument and suspend judgement on its conclusions, it has much to teach us about the possible relationships between business ethics and surrounding culture., Presentation given at the Annual Meeting of the American Business Law Association
Ethical Considerations for Personnel Administrators and Human Resources Managers
Human resource professionals and personnel administrators in their professional role will inevitably make decisions that affect the welfare of the organizations and the people they work for and with. Determining the "proper course of action" often raises ethical concerns. This paper discusses how ethical analysis and decision making can help human resource managers make decisions that benefit both the company and the company's employees., Invited paper presented at the National Conference of the American Society for Personnel Administration, Chicago June 1984.
Data Set from 2016 Survey of Chinese Engineers on Professional Ethics
Data Set from 2016 Survey of Chinese Engineers on Professional Ethics
Raw data of a survey of Chinese engineers looking at their conceptions of professionalism and professional ethics. Collaborative project by Dr. Michael Davis of the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions and Dr. Hengli Zhang of the Center for Engineering Ethics Studies, Beijing University of Technology
Four Kinds of Workplace Ethics for Discussion
A collection of four cases illustrating common ethical issues that come up in business settings, covering the topics of managerial ethics, drugs in the workplace, stealing from the workplace, and supervisor and worker relationships.
Methodological Missteps: A Response to Brooks' "On Retribution"
Thom Brooks claims his paper has only one thesis—that, for epistemological reasons (in particular, requiring a “gold standard of desert”), “retributivism is impossible to enact as a practice”. I think the paper has at least two other theses as well, both unacknowledged and more or less independent of the first. One is that there is only one true retributivism (“pure retributivism” or “retributivism strictly speaking”). This claim seems to rest on an unjustified, and (I believe) unjustifiable, Platonism. The second unacknowledged thesis is that this one true retributivism suffers (and must suffer) from certain flaws, in particular: 1) moral rigorism (forbidding the criminal justice system to show mercy or to deviate in any other way from what the criminal deserves for his crime); 2) methodological individualism (requiring that desert be “a particular criminal’s desert” unaffected by “other factors, such as society’s equilibrium”); and 3) methodological absolutism (an inability to “choose punishments on account of how they might be related to each other and various crimes”). What I propose to do here is, first, briefly dispose of Brooks’ epistemological claim, then (at greater length) explain why retributivism is best thought of as a family of loosely related theories no one of which has the privilege of being “true retributivism” (even though some are certainly historically or conceptually closer to the core of retributive thinking than others) and, last, why, so understood, retributivism does not suffer from any of the three flaws Brooks claims true retributivism must suffer from., Published as part of the Online Philosophy Conference, May 14, 2006.http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/online_philosophy_confere/
Ethics After the Crash
Though my title may suggest a concern with wrongdoing, my primary concern is good conduct, how to get people to do the right thing. I shall argue that you have a special role to play in the firms for which you work, a role that goes beyond financial analysis. Your training in ethics and your commitment to a standard higher than law, market, and morality, give you insight into certain hard choices that your employer or co-workers may lack. I also shall argue that you should go out of your way to make that insight available., Paper presented at a meeting for the Society of Financial Analysts, Toronto, Canada, December 10, 1987.
Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Workplace : A Philosophical Inquiry
Should the employees of a large private business be free to speak out on any subject without fear of dismissal or other sanctions even when they level harsh criticisms at their employers? In this paper I will argue that they should for reasons that closely parallel one of the fundamental bases for the principle of freedom of expression pertaining to the relation between individuals of the state. An important consequence of this view is that corporate employees should be free to speak without fear of sanction even when they make false allegations that lead to a decline in either productivity or profits., Paper presented at the Conference on Business Ethics, Western Michigan University, November 1-2, 1979.
General Contractors : Some Ethical Problems
A series of small ethics case studies illustrating ethical dilemmas that general contractors in the construction industry are likely to face.
Professionalism Among Chinese Engineers: An Empirical Study
Professionalism Among Chinese Engineers: An Empirical Study
This is a copy of a dataset - in English and Chinese - completed in 2018 looking at concepts of professionalism. Following on the Davis, Zhang survey of 2016, this study continues to evaluate the claim that China has a profession of engineering (as defined by Davis) with a larger, better educated, demographically different pool of two hundred and twenty-nine Chinese engineers, using more specific and deeper questions about “profession”, for example, by adding the investigation of competence (the discipline of engineering)—the perceived knowledge, skill, and judgment of the interviewees as evidence of one aspect of profession. The dataset includes a copy of the questionnaire in Chinese and English, as well as both the entire dataset of surveyed individuals as well as the data from individuals who were deemed to have enough experience in engineering to be included in the final data set analyzed.
On the Need for Ethical Buying and Selling
In 1978 the Center for the Study of the Professions at IIT conducted a survey for the National Association of Purchasing Management to determine the real ethical practices of industrial buyers in the United States. This survey started the Ethical Standards Committee thinking about the current ethical practices in the field, and this paper seeks to discuss the roots of some of these practices questions that arose after reviewing the results of this survey., CSEP Occasional Papers No. 6, May 1982. Remarks Delivered at the Professional Ethics Luncheon Seminar, Americana Congress Hotel, Chicago, March 23, 1982
Ownership of Computer Programs
Discusses reasons for against copyrighting computer software programs. Reasons against include the potential for holding back scientific discoveries. Though the labor that goes into creating computer programs does seem to create property rights, the principle of free thought seems to override this right. The author discusses some of the problems that exist in copyright, trade secret, and patent law and discusses why these laws should be changed to discourage secrecy so they do not interfere with free thought., Presented at a meeting of the Collegiate Institute for Values and Science, University of Michigan, December 9, 1981
Engineering Codes of Ethics : Analysis and Applications
This paper uses the events leading up to the explosion of the Challenger to begin a discussion about the important role professional codes of ethics play in shaping how professionals should respond to ethical questions and issues that come up in daily practice. The paper explores the history of codes of ethics, why different engineering professions, such as computer engineering, and mechanical engineering, have developed their own codes of ethics, and tries to answer the question, why obey your profession's code? The paper also analyzes a case study using the codes of ethics and offers a series of case studies for further discussion., Manuscript of an unpublished paper originally written to be part of the Exxon Modules for Applied Ethics Series. http://ethics.iit.edu/index1.php/Publications/Modules%20in%20Applied%20Ethics
Critical Attributes of Good Process Decisions: a Guide for Reflective Special Education Hearing Officers
This monograph offers guidance for special education due process hearing officers in their efforts to write good due process decisions. It has four sections dealing respectively with: - Summary and explanation of factual findings; - Justification of legal conclusions; - Framing and determination of rulings and orders; - Writing choices in a special education due process opinion as to word selection, organizational structure, style, rhetoric, and tone. The monograph is not intended to replace, but instead to supplement, the use of comprehensive summaries of substantive and procedural special education law. It aims to address an essential, yet presently unmet need – for an educational approach that helps special education due process hearing officers to focus critical reflection upon processes involved both in thinking through issues in a case and finding words to express the conclusions arrived at in writing a decision.
Limitations Upon Legitimate Authority to Suspend and Expel K-12 Public School Students: A Moral Analysis
This paper presents a moral analysis of the limitations upon legitimate authority to suspend and expel students in K-12 public schools. The paper has four sections. The first presents two case vignettes that pose difficult moral issues concerning suspensions and expulsions in K-12 public schools. The second section develops an analysis of the moral bases of a child’s right to receive a K-12 public education. Section three extends the analysis in section two, relating it specifically to limitations upon morally legitimate authority to suspend and expel students in K-12 public schools. The fourth section returns to the two case vignettes and discusses the moral issues they pose from the standpoint of the analysis developed in sections two and three. . The analysis, I hope, will benefit educators, parents, and the general public in helping to identify, clarify their understanding of, and gain insight into principles, which, I believe underlie any morally justifiable policy concerning K-12 public school suspensions and expulsions.
Moral Responsibility and Whistleblowing in the Nuclear Industry : Browns Ferry and Three Mile Island
This paper analyzes the actions of a number of Nuclear Engineers at Browns Ferry and Three Mile Island who resigned from their positions in order to highlight the safety concerns they saw in the U.S. nuclear power program and nuclear power plant safety. The paper includes a description and chronology of events, and an in-depth case study analysis of the moral responsibility of engineers and whistleblowing.
Engineering Ethics in China
This article describes China’s century-long concern with the professional ethics of engineers, especially a succession of codes of engineering ethics going back at least to 1933. This description is the result both of our own archival research and of “philosophical history”, the application of concepts from the philosophy of professions to the facts historians (or we) have discovered. Engineers, historians, social scientists, and philosophers of technology, as well as students of professional ethics, should find this description interesting. It certainly provides a reason to wonder whether those who write about codes of professional ethics as if they were an Anglo-American export unlikely to put down roots elsewhere might have overlooked many early codes outside English-speaking countries. While code writers in China plainly learned from Western codes, the Chinese codes were not mere copies of their Western counterparts. Indeed, the Chinese codes sometimes differed inventively from Western codes in form (for example, being wholly positive) or content (for example, protecting local culture).

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