"Taking Sides" volumes present current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. Each issue is thoughtfully framed with an issue summary, an issue introduction, and a postscript or challenge questions. "Taking Sides" readers feature an annotated listing of selected World Wide Web sites. An online Instructor's Resource Guide with testing material is available for each volume. "Using Taking Sides in the Classroom" is also an excellent instructor resource.
HTML> Table of Contents Clashing Views in Business Ethics and Society, Eleventh Edition <dt> Unit 1 Capitalism and the Corporation <dl> <dl> <dl> <dt>Issue 1. Can Capitalism Lead to Human Happiness? YES: Adam Smith, from An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vols. 1 and 2 (1869) NO: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, from The Communist Manifesto (1848) If we will but leave self-interested people to seek their own advantage, Adam Smith (1723 1790) argues, the result, unintended by any one of them, will be the greater advantage of all. No government interference is necessary to protect the general welfare. Leave people to their own self-interested devices, Karl Marx (1818 1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820 1895) reply, and those who by luck and inheritance own the means of production will rapidly reduce everyone else to virtual slavery. The few may be fabulously happy, but all others will live in misery. <dt>Issue 2. Can Restructuring a Corporation s Rules Make a Moral Difference? YES: Josef Wieland, from The Ethics of Governance, Business Ethics Quarterly ( January 2001) NO: Ian Maitland, from Distributive Justice in Firms: Do the Rules of Corporate Governance Matter? Business Ethics Quarterly (January 2001) Can moral values be attributed to organizations (as well as to individual persons)? Josef Wieland, director of the German Business Ethics Network s Centre for Business Ethics, argues that they can. After carefully developing a concept of governance ethics for corporations, he argues that the incorporation of moral conditions and requirements into the structures of the firm is the precondition for lasting beneficial effects of the virtues of the individuals within it. We can only be moral persons at work when the workplace, too, is moral. Ian Maitland, professor of Business, Government and Society at the University of Minnesota s Carlson School of Management, here plays his favorite role as Business Ethics Curmudgeon. Changing the rules will have no effect whatsoever on the moral work of the corporation (taking as his example the justice of the distributive mechanisms of the firm) and will succeed, if taken seriously, only in impairing its efficiency. <dt>Issue 3. Is Increasing Profits the Only Social Responsibility of Business? YES: Milton Friedman, from The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970. NO: Joe DesJardins, Business and Environmental Sustainability, Business and Professional Ethics Vol. 24, nos 1 & 2. Friedman argues that businesses have neither the right nor the ability to fool around with social responsibility as distinct from profit-making. They serve employees and customers best when they do their work with maximum efficiency. The only restrictions on the pursuit of profit that Friedman accepts are the requirements of law and the rules of the game ( open and free competition without deception or fraud ). DesJardins explains that in the early years of the 21st century, we face a set of serious economic, ecological, and ethical challenges that require businesses to accept social responsibilities that support their own environmental sustainability and help meet the real needs of billions of people around the globe. He suggests various ways in which businesses might go about this without sacrificing profitability. <dt>Issue 4. Can Individual Virtue Survive Corporate Pressure? YES: Robert C. Solomon, from Victims of Circumstances? A Defense of Virtue Ethics in Business, Business Ethics Quarterly (January 2003) NO: Gilbert Harman, from No Character or Personality, Business Ethics Quarterly (January 2003) Joining the long-standing debate on the possibility of free choice and moral agency in the business world, Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy at the University of Texas in Austin Robert C. Solomon argues that whatever
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