I still remember the feeling I had when I saw my first air band performance. It was a sick kind of feeling. I hadn’t known what an air band was. The announcement came over the p.a. at my school-for-the-day, and I dutifully shepherded the class to the gym. Then I watched, incredulous, as group after …
Category: business
business
Jun 02 2013
The Futility of Teaching Business Ethics or Why Our World Will End
There are four reasons why teaching ethics to business students is an exercise in futility. 1. The profit motive trumps everything. As long as this is the case, there’s no point in teaching students the intricacies of determining right and wrong. Whether something is morally acceptable or not is simply irrelevant to them. It might …
May 04 2013
Ethics without Philosophers
Could someone without a business degree become a marketing consultant? Then how is it that people without philosophy degrees are becoming ethics consultants? [1] Is it that people don’t know that Ethics is a branch of Philosophy just as Marketing is a branch of Business? Doubtful. Is it just the typical male overstatement of one’s …
Apr 19 2013
People Skills
I’ve always been rather proud of not having any ‘people skills’. Of not being able to ‘talk to people’, smooth things over, talk them out of their way of seeing things, talk them over to my way, persuade, influence, manipulate, control. No wonder supervisors, salespeople, and customer relations people need good people skills. And no …
Mar 21 2013
Food Fight Breaks Out in the House of Commons
Have you watched the House of Commons proceedings lately? It’s unbelievable. I haven’t seen such petty bickering, name-calling, and tongue-sticking-outting since Dicky called Peter a wuss at recess back in grade two. Then Johnny, who was on Dicky’s side, started throwing clumps of dirt at Dougie, who was on Peter’s side, and a bunch of …
Feb 14 2013
A Gold Watch. Seriously.
At one of my previous workplaces, we had a little ceremony each year honouring employees who had worked there for five, ten, or fifteen years. I used to go. (There was free pizza.) But then I stopped. (After three years, I could afford my own pizza.) It’s a curious thing, this esteem we have for …
Jan 19 2013
To Wail like a Brat – and Advertise
On what basis do you claim the right to publicize your desire for money – at my expense? You use forests full of trees for unsolicited mailouts, you produce and then dump tons of nonbiodegradable plastic for oversized packaging aka advertising, you destroy beautiful landscapes with your ubiquitous signs, you stuff my emailbox with your …
Nov 27 2012
Crossing the Line
I crossed a picket line once. The Ontario Federation of Secondary School Teachers (OSSTF) in the Toronto area was on strike in 1983, and one of their demands was that union members be hired to fill night school and summer school teaching positions. They were concerned about quality of education: they didn’t want these courses …
Nov 15 2012
Business Rules the World. Do we want it to?
One of the most common – and most serious – weaknesses of codes of ethics, and indeed, most ethical theories, is that they don’t prioritize values. They’re fine for many of the simpler ethical questions, but when goods and interests conflict, when virtues and rights collide, they don’t provide a way to determine which interest, …
Sep 22 2012
What’s Wrong with Selling your Organs?
It seems to be morally acceptable to sell one’s blood, sperm, eggs, and hair. So what’s so unacceptable about selling one’s kidney, for example? And in case people think the forementioned sales are unacceptable, let me make another analogy: it’s okay to get paid to play football — why is using your body as a …
fiction
