Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Seminar on entrepreneurial ethics

During my visit to Francisco Marroquín University, I led a one-hour seminar on entrepreneurial ethics. Subtopics:

* Three moral types: Carly, Tonya, and Jane.
* Six questions in ethics.
* Egoism, Altruism, and Predation.
* Entrepreneurial ethics: entrepreneurial success and virtue.
* Why hasn’t the case for liberty convinced everyone?
* Entrepreneurial ethics in contrast to historical codes: hunter-gatherer, aristocratic, and monkish.

Related: What Business Ethics Can Learn From Entrepreneurship[at SSRN].

Coming soon: Video of my UFM seminar “Philosophy and the Evolution of the Mixed Economy.”

Two nineteenth-century riots

A watershed event in American business history was the Homestead Riot of 1892. At the Homestead Steel Works near Pittsburgh, union leaders and workers rejected wage cuts proposed by owner Andrew Carnegie and plant manager Henry Frick. Negotiations failed, a strike began, the plant was closed, workers armed themselves, the Pinkertons were called in, and a battle ensued, killing three Pinkertons and nine workers.

But did you also know about the riot at New York’s Astor Place Opera House in 1849, in which angry factions clashed over the proper theatrical interpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth? One faction preferred the “ruggedly masculine” and “forceful acting style” of Edwin Forrest, while the other advocated the “more restrained” approach of William Macready. Critics pronounced, insults were slung, tempers flared, one night the crowd went wild, the state militia was called in, and twenty-two people were killed.

So: Twelve people were killed over a wage dispute, while twenty-two were killed at the theatre. Interesting times when riots over Shakespeare can be more deadly than riots over money.

UFM interview on business ethics

I was video-interviewed by Luis Figueroa at Francisco Marroquín University on the topic of business ethics. In the twelve-minute discussion, I respond to the following questions:

* What do you think of “corporate social responsibility”?
* Why do you believe business ethics should begin with entrepreneurship?
* Are there differences between ethics in family and business contexts?
* What is your favorite business ethics book?

Review of Frey’s America’s Economic Moralists

My review essay on Donald Frey’s America’s Economic Moralists: A History of Rival Ethics and Economics (SUNY Press, 2009) is now out in Business Ethics Quarterly. Subscribers to BEQ can access the issue here.

Cite: Hicks, Stephen R. C. 2012. “Review of Donald Frey’s America’s Economic Moralists: A History of Rival Ethics and Economics.” Business Ethics Quarterly 22.1, 186-193.

Michael Strong on Socratic teaching

I like this paragraph from Michael Strong’s The Habit of Thought:

“The effort of Socratic Practice is to develop students’ own standard of intellectual judgment by means of placing the onus of responsibility for understanding entirely on them and providing them with the tools and experiences necessary to develop their intellectual judgment. ‘Does it make sense to you?’ is the central question to students whenever we are working to understand a text. As long as the student knows that, whether by didactic instruction or by subtle conversational manipulation, she will ultimately be led to the ‘right’ answer, she will never rely on her own judgment in the deepest sense. In order to come to rely on her judgment, and to feel a need to refine it, she must continually be put in situations where she is completely on her own.” (p. 15)

This semester Marsha Enright and I are experimenting with Socratic Seminars in my Philosophical Foundations of Education course. So far we have done sessions with selections from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave [pdf] from The Republic, John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education [pdf], and John Dewey’s Democracy in Education [pdf] .

Interview with Phyllis Johnson on entrepreneurship, coffee, and empowering women in Africa

In my interview with Phyllis Johnson after her talk at Rockford College, Ms. Johnson and I discussed her entrepreneurial career as well as the challenges faced by coffee farmers in Africa–most of them low-paid women with little-to-no business education and who, in many cases, are not allowed to own farmland due to cultural, religious, or legal barriers. Without property rights, business education, and equal status, women face an uphill battle out of economic poverty.

My nineteen-minute follow up interview with Ms. Johnson after her talk is below:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Cross-posted at the CEE site.

Interview with Alexei Marcoux on moral partiality in business

Alexei Marcoux of Loyola University Chicago spoke at Rockford College on whether ethics requires moral partiality or impartiality in business decision-making. Below is my follow-up sixteen-minute interview with Professor Marcoux. Along the way, we discuss nepotism, conflicts of interest, fiduciary obligations, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, and contemporary business ethicist Norman Bowie.

Part I:

Part II:

Cross-posted at the CEE site.

Phyllis Johnson to speak at Rockford College

Phyllis Johnson will speak on “Entrepreneurship, Coffee, and Empowering Women in Africa” to my Business and Economic Ethics class on Thursday, October 6.

Johnson is the President and Co-Founder of BD Imports, a Rockford-based company known for giving starts to African women and small businesses engaged in the production and trade of coffee. Johnson is a graduate of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a B.S. in Microbiology, is a board member of the International Women in Coffee Alliance, and has spoken on women in trade at the Joint Advisory Committee Meetings at the United Nations of Geneva, Switzerland.

Please see the flyer for details about the talk’s time and location. Johnson’s visit is sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship.