Volume 2, Issue 1
>> Friday, January 15, 2010
A Note from the Director
This is the second issue of Issues and Perspectives. We hope that you will find something of interest here, perhaps even something that is useful in your personal or professional life. Reading on you’ll find brief articles about the conference announced in the first issue, “Resolving the Shortage of Organs for Transplantation: Ethics, Science, and Technology,” that took place in Charleston in mid-November; the EMRGE (Ethics in Medical Research and Genetic Engineering) project that involves high school students in Anderson District 5; what the Center for Academic Integrity has been up to, including its annual conference held at Washington University in St. Louis in mid-October; our international activities; and Ethics Across the Curriculum. In addition, you will find part 2 of C. Calhoun Lemon Fellow Stephen Satris’s article “Three Ethical Tools,” and an invited piece by David Gill, “Building Ethically Healthy Organizations.” David Gill is a respected organizational ethics consultant and author of It's About Excellence: Building Ethically Healthy Organizations. In the spring of 2009 Gill was the speaker for a morning program, “The Six Essential Questions for Ethical Excellence (and the Answers too!),” at the Greenville Chamber of Commerce office; this program was the third in a series of Ethics Forums the Rutland Institute put on in collaboration with the Greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce. We appreciate his willingness to write a piece for Issues and Perspectives.
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"What's so important about Academic Integrity?"
The 2009 CAI conference was held at Washington University in St. Louis, October 16-18. The theme this year was “Creating a Culture of Integrity: Research and Best Practices.” 156 people attended the conference (133 attendees from 26 states; 1 from Australia, 18 from Canada, 1 from Egypt, 1 from Mexico, 1 from Qatar, and 1 from United Arab Emirates).
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Building Ethically Healthy Organizations
One hundred sixty of six hundred recent MBA graduates from Harvard Business School created and signed an “MBA Oath” voluntarily pledging to serve the greater good, act responsibly and ethically, and refrain from advancing their own narrow ambitions at the expense of others. Since it has been widely noted that MBAs, including those from elite schools like Harvard, have often been at the heart of the business scandals of recent years, and since the conventional business mythology today is that some kind of “invisible hand” will optimize a marketplace where each actor pursues their own rational self-interest (i.e., big bucks for me asap) . . . we can only be grateful for the twenty percent who stood up and spoke up for ethical, responsible business. We have certainly had enough of the other kind.
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Resolving the Shortage of Organs for Transplantation: Ethics, Science and Technology
The conference took place on November 20th in the MUSC College of Health Professions state of the art facility (the historic renovated High School of Charleston), thanks to the efforts of planning committee member, Dr. Robert Sade. One hundred and thirty-five invitations were sent and a total of forty-four attended the conference. Attendees represented ten organizations and nine institutions of higher education and came from disciplines as diverse as: health law, ethics, transplant medicine and surgery, regenerative research, nursing, organ procurement organization administration, theology, philosophy, university administration, Ph.D. Programs, and related non-profit administration.Read more...
EMRGE Update
November 17-19 over 210 high school biology students came to the Clemson campus on a field trip experience as part of the Ethics in Medical Research and Genetic Engineering project. More
Ethics Across the Curriculum
We started doing ethics across the curriculum seminars ten years ago (the pilot seminar preceded the establishment of the Rutland Center --now Institute-- for Ethics). We are very pleased that faculty from other schools have participated in the seminar here on our campus. We are also pleased with the success we have had taking the seminar on the road.
Reflections
Back in the 1990’s the President and CEO of the utility company I worked for always emphasized that our focus was to balance the interests of those that comprised our “three legged stool”: employees, customers and shareholders. I was always proud to work for that organization, because the priorities were balanced and appropriate. Now nearly 20 years later the concept of stakeholder theory is considered novel and potent enough to earn R. Edward Freeman the #42 spot on the Ethisphere list of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics. It is suggested that the impact of Freeman’s newest book was made more significant given the fact that Jack Welch made #65 on the list “for admitting in an interview with Financial Times that his focus on “shareholder value” was “the dumbest idea in the world.””
To check out the entire list, and many more interesting tidbits, click here.
Linda M. Gallicchio
Associate Director; Business
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Three Ethical Tools (Part Two)
In Part One of this two-part article, I discussed the first two basic tools of ethical thinking; I called them the harm-benefit approach and the rights approach. According to the harm-benefit approach, we are to pay special attention to the harms (bad results or costs) and the benefits (good results) of any action, and choose the action that results is the greatest net benefit, in the long run, for all affected parties. According to the second approach, we focus on rights that people are due, and the respect we owe to people. According to this approach, we are not to try to produce beneficial or good results if that would involve the violation of people’s rights.“Getting Out”: RIE/CAI Around the World
RIE personnel have been abroad before doing the good work of the Rutland Institute (e.g., China, Japan, Kuwait, Ireland, Australia, Guam).Recent international activities include Linda Gallicchio’s presentation, “Ethical Sustainability in the Research Environment,” at the 7th Symposium New Perspectives: Trace Elements in Human Health, in Athens, Greece (October 2009); Teddi Fishman’s presentation, “Defining Plagiarism: Toward a More Accurate and Useful Understanding of Plagiarism,” and a presentation by Dan Wueste and Teddi Fishman, “The customer isn’t always right: limitations of “customer service approaches to education, or why higher education is not Burger King,” both of which occurred at the 4th Asia Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity (September 2009), University of Wollongong, NSW Australia. Wueste and Fishman also conducted an Ethics Across the Curriculum seminar for faculty at the University of Wollongong prior to the conference.
Gallicchio’s presentation has been published in the Proceedings of the 7th Symposium New Perspectives: Trace Elements in Human Health. Wueste and Fishman’s piece is forthcoming in the International Journal for Educational Integrity Volume 6 (1) 2010 and the Proceedings of the 4th Asia Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity.
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Know what is INSIDE a Printer Cartridge
Last fall I attended the Gain Momentum Business Expo in Anderson, SC. One of the vendors there really captured my attention. So much so, that I have continued to think about the information shared and mentioned it to others. I am confident that you will find it equally eye opening.
Thanks goes to Scott Wortham, owner of Inksters of America franchises in Clemson and Anderson, SC for the following text and photos.
Linda Gallicchio
Associate Director, Business
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