We address how to ethically evaluate workplace practices when workplace behavioral norms conflict with employees’ attitudes toward those norms, which, according to research on psychological contract violations, regularly occurs. Drawing on Scanlonian contractualism, we introduce the intersubjective reflection process (IR process). The IR process ethically evaluates workplace practices according to whether parties to a workplace practice have intersubjectively valid grounds to veto the practice. We present normative and empirical justification for this process and apply the IR process to accounts of workplace moral dilemmas. We end by identifying future directions for research related to the IR process.

Assume that I am starting a business in Madison, Wisconsin, producing desks for professors,” I tell my students at the beginning of a lecture about Marxism. “I ask the Business School dean how much he paid for his current inventory of worn-out desks. The actual price was $500. How much does he tell me?”

“Four hundred fifty dollars!” a student shouts from the back of the room.

The rise of liberal market economies, propagated by neoliberal free market thought, has created a vacant responsibility for public interests in the market order of society. This development has been critiqued by Catholic social teaching (CST), forcefully arguing that governments and businesses should be directed to the common good. In this debate, no attention has yet been given to the Reformational tradition and its principle of sphere sovereignty, which provides guidelines on the responsibilities of governments and companies for the public interest of society. This article analyzes the differences and similarities between CST and the Reformational philosophy in their critiques of the neoliberal free market perspective of Hayek. We apply the three perspectives to the case of orphan drugs in the pharmaceutical industry and show that CST and the Reformational philosophy offer valuable insights in correction to Hayek’s views on the responsibilities of governments and companies for public health interests.

This commentary offers some preliminary reflections on William C. Frederick’s thought provoking effort toward developing a theory of business values. These reflections are preliminary in that they are based on the conceptual framework or infrastructure outlined in the preceding issue of this journal (July, 1992, pp. 283-303), rather than on the comprehensive version of the theory. Consequently some thoughts may be irrelevant, even inaccurate in the context of the more complete version of the theory.

The following address considers the relevance of business ethics education to our students. Is our concept of ethics one of practice and application? And, if so, are we accountable to our students, our institutions and ourselves, for the practical impact that we have or, conversely, that we do not have? Aren’t we responsible in part if one of our students ventures forth and does not act in an ethical manner? Though a positive response to this query may not be popular, what is the alternative? If we are not responsible for the impact (or lack thereof) that we have on our students, then what is our purpose? The discussion further explores the nature of this impact and the process by which we can amplify the results.

Not so long ago I interviewed a computer engineer in her home. Surrounded with toys and a napping baby—the interview time had been chosen carefully—she talked about how she worked as an independent contractor for a large electronics company. Connected by high-speed broadband, two telephone lines, and a cell phone, she felt fully integrated into the work, exchanging electronic files with her colleagues and having telephone conversations with customers two continents and umpteen time zones away. She told me she often worked late after the baby was in bed and during the baby's afternoon nap before she went to pick her older child up from school. Despite these odd working times, however, she was convinced that none of the company's customers and only some of her work colleagues knew that she worked at home. She was very contented with the arrangement.

A growing number of organizational theorists have become skeptical about some of the more hallowed ideas of their field. They sense that there is a serious divergence between the nature of organizational life as it is described in theory and as it is experienced in practice. And they believe, therefore, that some corrective efforts are in order to redress this problem.