Taking Ethics Seriously: Why Ethics Is an Essential Tool for the Modern Workplace
John Hooker is T. Jerome Holleran Professor of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility, and Professor of Operations Research, at Carnegie Mellon University. He has also held visiting posts at numerous universities, most recently at the London School of Economics and the State University of Campinas, Brazil. He holds doctoral degrees in philosophy and management science. He brings his extensive background in philosophy, mathematics and logic to the rigorous analysis of ethical dilemmas, and his background in management to making sure the dilemmas are realistic. He has published more than 170 research articles, eight books, and five edited volumes on ethics, operations research, and cross-cultural issues, including Business Ethics as Rational Choice, Taking Ethics Seriously, and Working across Cultures. Hooker is the founding editor-in-chief of the world’s only academic journal dedicated to teaching business ethics and has organized international ethics conferences in China, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. He also has a strong interest in cross-cultural ethics and has lived and worked in 10 countries on 6 continents. He is a fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences and has served on numerous program committees and editorial boards. At Carnegie Mellon, he developed the ethics program in the Tepper School of Business and received a Distinguished Academic Leadership Award, an Award for Sustained Teaching Excellence (one of only two awarded), and the Gerald Thompson Award for Excellence in the Classroom.
Abstract: Ethics is no less important to an organization than technology or finance. We need ethics not to decide who is good or bad, but to build social infrastructure that, like physical infrastructure, is indispensable to getting anything done. Simplistic platitudes cannot accomplish this. Only a sophisticated intellectual framework can guide us through the complexities of today’s world. This talk illustrates why failures to think analytically about ethics, not bad people, lie behind many ethical lapses in organizations. It presents examples of how ethical dilemmas can be resolved, and sound organizational policies developed, on the basis of rigorous ethical analysis.
This Provost’s Lecture, co-sponsored by the Center for Integration of Business Education & Humanities and College of Business, will be held on Monday, October 2, at 2:30 pm in the Wang Center, Lecture Hall 1.
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