First, thank you so much for the commitment of $8 per month for the Urban Lens!
Your message led me to ask myself: Would more ethics conversations at universities reduce the incidence of corporate greed? Perhaps. If such conversations were to be well-structured and deeply integrated into corporate culture, they might indeed play a role in curbing greed -- by helping to foster a culture of accountability, transparency, and long-term thinking.
However, for ethics conversations to have a real impact, they need to be more than just surface-level discussions. They must be deeply embedded in corporate culture, values, and decision-making processes, including things such as strategic planning, performance evaluations, and reward systems. And in this respect, unfortunately, I find it hard to be sanguine. If my own personal experience in the military and university life is any indicator, most ethics conversations outside the classroom, such as in campus adminstrative offices and board rooms, are stylized, and engaged, perhaps begrudgingly, for purposes of meet impressing and convincing the others in the room of our high-mindedness. The relatively few times I've seen true leadership commitment to ethics conversations, and actions, it's created problems for the ones who exhibited it. I've always felt grateful for those people: they're few and far between. Still, I know of no other, better, way to stimulate more other-regarding behaviors than to do our best to get more such conversations going -- probably best when we do so with young people still in the K-12 educational system.
I've not read the article in the link you sent me, and probably will not do so for a couple days, until my travels are over and I am settled in. At that point, I'll plan to read it.
Hello, Professor Bowen. I would add that another key benefit of urban and regional universities lies in the ethics conversations that they help to build and maintain in urban and regional areas (The Missing Committees: Research Ethics in the Making in Switzerland https://brill.com/view/journals/ehmh/78/2/article-p310_310.xml?language=en)
I have been trying to understand why the Purdue Pharma scandal leading to widespread opioid addiction started in Stamford, CT. I used to work in Stamford, and the legal counsel of the company where I worked told me one day that I often seemed to be the only person in the company interested in what he had to say. Stamford, CT also serves as the headquarters of Philip Morris Intl (tobacco), WWE (Worldwide Wrestling), and Digital Currency Group (cryptocurrency), along with numerous other HQs. There's one college campus in Stamford (UConn-Stamford) and it's focused on job prep. I believe that ethics conversations are missing in Stamford, CT, and the job-focused profile of the one satellite college campus there has not helped.
First, thank you so much for the commitment of $8 per month for the Urban Lens!
Your message led me to ask myself: Would more ethics conversations at universities reduce the incidence of corporate greed? Perhaps. If such conversations were to be well-structured and deeply integrated into corporate culture, they might indeed play a role in curbing greed -- by helping to foster a culture of accountability, transparency, and long-term thinking.
However, for ethics conversations to have a real impact, they need to be more than just surface-level discussions. They must be deeply embedded in corporate culture, values, and decision-making processes, including things such as strategic planning, performance evaluations, and reward systems. And in this respect, unfortunately, I find it hard to be sanguine. If my own personal experience in the military and university life is any indicator, most ethics conversations outside the classroom, such as in campus adminstrative offices and board rooms, are stylized, and engaged, perhaps begrudgingly, for purposes of meet impressing and convincing the others in the room of our high-mindedness. The relatively few times I've seen true leadership commitment to ethics conversations, and actions, it's created problems for the ones who exhibited it. I've always felt grateful for those people: they're few and far between. Still, I know of no other, better, way to stimulate more other-regarding behaviors than to do our best to get more such conversations going -- probably best when we do so with young people still in the K-12 educational system.
I've not read the article in the link you sent me, and probably will not do so for a couple days, until my travels are over and I am settled in. At that point, I'll plan to read it.
Thanks again!
Bill
Hello, Professor Bowen. I would add that another key benefit of urban and regional universities lies in the ethics conversations that they help to build and maintain in urban and regional areas (The Missing Committees: Research Ethics in the Making in Switzerland https://brill.com/view/journals/ehmh/78/2/article-p310_310.xml?language=en)
I have been trying to understand why the Purdue Pharma scandal leading to widespread opioid addiction started in Stamford, CT. I used to work in Stamford, and the legal counsel of the company where I worked told me one day that I often seemed to be the only person in the company interested in what he had to say. Stamford, CT also serves as the headquarters of Philip Morris Intl (tobacco), WWE (Worldwide Wrestling), and Digital Currency Group (cryptocurrency), along with numerous other HQs. There's one college campus in Stamford (UConn-Stamford) and it's focused on job prep. I believe that ethics conversations are missing in Stamford, CT, and the job-focused profile of the one satellite college campus there has not helped.