Is offering hazard pay ethically permissible when the pay premium is the only reason that a dangerous job is accepted? Robert C. Hughes argues that it is not. Central to his argument is the claim that in such cases, workers intend the foreseeable risks of harm as a means to the pay premium. Herein I question the plausibility of this claim and then develop a conception of the concept of means sufficient to make it plausible. By so doing, I provide support for Hughes’s stringent position.

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.

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.

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.

According to the nonworseness claim, it cannot be morally worse to exploit someone than not to interact with them at all when the interaction 1) is mutually beneficial, 2) is voluntary, and 3) has no negative effects on third parties. My aim in this article is to defend the moral significance of exploitation from this challenge. To that end, I develop a novel account of why sweatshop owners have a moral obligation to pay sweatshop workers a nonexploitative wage despite the fact that their relationship is entirely optional. More precisely, I defend two main claims. First, I show that sweatshop owners are morally obligated to pay sweatshop workers a nonexploitative wage even though they have a right not to hire them and even though that will require them to pay sweatshop workers a wage that is higher than the one they voluntarily accepted. Second, I explain why this obligation on the part of sweatshop owners is not defeated by the fact that other individuals not party to the transaction would benefit even more than sweatshop workers from receiving this additional level of pay.

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.

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.

The moral foundation of capitalism holds that the wealth of a nation is enhanced (utilitarianism) by providing individuals with the freedom and liberty to do what comes natural, pursuing their own self-interests (egoism). When alignment between individual interests and general welfare is achieved, even if unintentionally achieved, minimum paternalistic governmental oversight and intervention is needed.