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THE MAGAZINE O F THE O PUS C O LLEGE O F BUSINESS FALL 2008 : VO LUME 6 : ISSUE 1
A BO U T : C O N T A C T : A RC H I V E
Q&A with Bill Browning: Follow Nature's Lead Trend Spotting: Health Care Reform in 2 009 - Don't Look to Washington Rise Up The Next Econom y The Value of an M.B.A. How Do You Measure Ethics? A Fondness for Words and Num bers It's in His Blood The Bottom Line: I Hav e an M.B.A.
The past two decades have seen an increased interest in defining ethical business
Entrepreneur giv es St. Thom as $1 0 m illion to support business ethics Ron Fowler 6 6 , Greg Hennes 85 am ong winners at Entrepreneur Awards Cerem ony Center for Fam ily Enterprise hosts conference on fam ily business issues In Mem oriam : Professor Em eritus Dr. Rawlie Sulliv an New director of John M. Morrison Center for Entrepreneurship, new faculty Two MBA students receiv e scholarships Honors for Opus College of Business Program s, Faculty and Students
practices. But how, exactly, does one define an ethical business practice and, more to the point, how does one measure ethical behavior? Rightly or wrongly,some would argue that a quantitative approach to measuring ethical behavior in a corporate entity is somehow alien to ethics and moral deliberation. Yet the SAIP Institute has developed a process the Self-Assessment and Improvement Process that seeks not only to support continuous improvement in areas of corporate social responsibility and business ethics, but also to quantitatively assess this most qualitative subject. Measurement and moral reasoning Jeremy Bentham, arguable the father of utilitarianism,held that one had to measure the amount of pleasure and pain that would result from an act in order to determine whether the deed was morally right or wrong. He identified seven variables in this quantitative assessment, including the intensity and the duration of the pleasure and pain produced by the action, and the number of people who experienced each sensation. According to Bentham, an act was morally praiseworthy if the net outcome of this measurement fell on the side of pleasure; otherwise, it was morally wrong. Many ethicists have raised objections to Benthams theory. But Bentham reminds us that moral reasoning usually entails some kind of assessment. Before we perform an action, we try to predict the acts likely outcomes and assess how well it conforms to certain enduring moral standards (telling the truth, keeping promises, honoring human dignity, and so forth). We also attempt to measure our moral character we scrutinize our inclinations and motives, all of which shape how we think about our moral responsibilities. And when we are at our best, our reasoning places extra weight on others claims and concerns. This prevents us from being unduly influenced by our own
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2012 University of St. Thomas Minnesota Opus College of Business Schulze Hall 200 1000 LaSalle Avenue Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403 USA 1-651-962-4200 cob@stthomas.edu
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