The extraordinarily rapid growth of global communications, information technology, and investments have energized hundreds of millions of business people and opened up immense opportunities in most of the countries of the world. Yet this apparently inevitable global business growth also has parallel dangers for people. In two areas the weaknesses of the global economy are evident: (1) Global business and financial operations with little accountability for long-term human needs; and (2) Goals and values of business managers that are not sufficient for business or for life.

In much of the written work on Christian or religious business ethics, a holistic framework is assumed but not argued for practically or supported philosophically. In this article I 1) outline a position of ethical holism, explaining its logic, motives, and consequences; 2) attack the ethical dualism of Carr, Friedman, and French; and 3) defend my theory against five possible objections. My basic thesis is that if a corporation wishes to hire employees who will act in compliance with ethical codes of the corporation, employees who both have a deeply rooted personal ethic that parallels that of the corporation and who see their business practices to be an extension of their personal ethic will be better suited candidates simply because they are more likely to be compliant. In other words, personal convictions and values are relevant to hiring practices, and a view that holds personal and business ethics to be separate affairs (Carr, Friedman, French) is misguided.

The Machiavellian model is often praised as a realistic description of modern corporate life. My analysis of The Prince follows Rousseau in arguing that the prince can survive and prosper most easily by creating an environment in which almost all the citizens prosper. Far from licensing unrestrained self-aggrandizement, in this model success only comes from providing real value to almost every citizen for the entire period of one's leadership.

Translation from the early sixteenth to the late twentieth century is far from simple; for example, the CEO is in many ways far less powerful than a Medici prince. The closest approximation is a far less bureaucratic organization with very small units possessing maximum autonomy. Also, deciding who is, and who is not, a citizen is not nearly as straightforward as it was for Machiavelli; it probably includes every stakeholder on whom the corporation has a major impact.

When subordinates have suffered an unfairness, managers sometimes try to compensate them by allocating something extra that belongs to the organization. These reactions, which we label as managerial Robin Hood behaviors, are undertaken without the consent of senior leadership. In four studies, we present and test a theory of managerial Robin Hoodism. In study 1, we found that managers themselves reported engaging in Robin Hoodism for various reasons, including a moral concern with restoring justice. Study 2 results suggested that managerial Robin Hoodism is more likely to occur when the justice violations involve distributive and interpersonal justice rather than procedural justice violations. In studies 3 and 4, when moral identity (trait or primed) was low, both distributive and interpersonal justice violations showed similar relationships to managerial Robin Hoodism. However, when moral identity was high, interpersonal justice violations showed a strong relationship to managerial Robin Hoodism regardless of the level of distributive justice.

This paper explores the subject of ethics expertise. We suggest that this is a topic which has been badly neglected despite ongoing discussions about subjects which presuppose a particular conception of expertise (e.g., codes of conduct, certification requirements). In addition, given significant challenges to any conception of ethical expertise, we try to determine whether it is possible to provide a meaningful and substantive account of it. The paper moves from more abstract discussion of the idea to grounding a particular model, providing substance to it, and discussing specific traits or qualities of ethics experts.

This paper addresses whether the adoption of Japanese financial practices by U.S. corporations can be used as a basis for encouraging U.S. managers to promote the interests of their (human) organizations over those of stockholders. An historical overview is provided of how the corporate organization in each country evolved and the corresponding development of managers’ responsibilities to the corporate organization versus shareholders. These concepts are then examined within the context of each country’s contemporary corporate financial structure and the corresponding financial responsibilities of managers to the corporate organization versus shareholders. A discussion is then provided of whether the values embodied in each system would affect the ability of the United States to encourage a more “corporate-oriented” ethic in its managers by adopting Japanese financial practices.

Investigations of large scale industrial accidents generally take one of two alternative approaches to identifying the cause or causes of those destructive events. The first is legal analysis, which focuses on the mechanical failure or human error that immediately preceded the accident. The second is socio-technical reasoning, which centers on the complexities of the interlocking technological and organizational systems that brought about the accident. Both are retrospective, and provide little insight into the means of avoiding industrial accidents in the future. This article looks at six levels of managerial responsibility within a firm, and suggests specific changes at all levels that should logically help in the prevention or mitigation of these high impact/low probability events. The most basic need, however, is for imagination, empathy, and courage at the most senior level of the firm.