Business Ethics Resources

Do you have an answer to the following questions?
Would you like to share your ideas with other interested people?
If yes, please write your response for one or more of the following questions and send to us through Contact page. We’ll publish them in the appropriate section of Business Ethics Resources website.

What is Business Ethics?
Why is Business Ethics necessary?
Is Business Ethics different than Ethics or Morality?
Can Business Ethics be taught?
What is Code of Ethics?
Do only big companies need Code of Ethics?
What is Environmental Ethics?
What is Bio-Ethics?
What is Corporate Social Responsibility?
Can a company be socially responsible?
Are profit and social responsibility competitors of each other?
Can a company be socially responsible and profitable?
What is Work Ethic?
What is the source of Work Ethic?
What is Protestant Work Ethic?
Do Protestants have a different kind of Work Ethic than the rest?
What is the source of Protestant Work Ethic?
What is Islamic Work Ethic?
What is the source of Islamic Work Ethic?

Please keep your response about 500 words and provide a byline.
Thanks!

Essays are being solicited for a special issue of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion on the timely theme of “religion, finance and ethics”. As the world recovers from the most significant financial crisis since the Great Depression, this special issue of the Bulletin will seek to explore issues of finance and economics as they relate to the academic study of the world’s religions. Of particular interest is the rise of Islamic finance, a topic much discussed by finance industry scholars and practitioners, as well as jurists, but comparatively under-analyzed in the field of religion studies.

Aside from aspects of Islamic finance, topics may include, but are certainly not limited to: religion in the age of financial capitalism; economics and ethical debates within world religions; the ‘prosperity gospel’ in contemporary Christianity; the historical and comparative study of religion and finance; re-evaluating the Weberian thesis; the financial crisis and religious institutions; critical perspectives on teaching finance from faith-based perspectives; religion and alternatives to capitalism.

The CSSR Bulletin is one of the oldest North American publications in the study of religion and has one of the largest circulations of any periodical in the discipline. It has been published by the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion for 38 years. It will move to Equinox in 2010 (volume 39) – with a slight change of title to Bulletin for the Study of Religion.

The Bulletin is committed to showcasing emerging scholarship and debates within the filed of religion studies and related disciplines. Essays are expected to be short and sharp, making critical contributions to the
development of the academic study of religion.

Articles should be 3,000 to 3,500 words long, with a minimum of endnotes and bibliographic references, and composed in Microsoft Word following The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition (2003).

SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE BY MARCH 31, 2010

Please e-mail and any inquiries or submissions to:

Ibrahim Abraham,
University of Bristol, UK
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

By Holly McCarthy *

I guess it’s a question we all must ask ourselves – are we pulling our weight at work or are we pulling the wool over our employers’ eyes? We’re expected to do the job that’s given to us, and more often than not, we think we’re doing the best we can. But what we don’t realize is that we’re often fooling ourselves into believing that we have impeccable work ethics and that we’re not fooling our employers. If you want to know if you’re really pulling your weight at work, ask yourself the following questions:

•    If you work by the hour, do you bill your client even though you’ve wasted the better part of those hours?
•    If your company has more than one branch in the same city, and if you’re supposed to swipe in and swipe out when you arrive at and leave work, do you cut corners and swipe in at one office and out at the other depending on which is closer to you?
•    If you’re allowed to use the Internet during office hours, do you use it for personal reasons, or worse, to hunt for another job?
•    If you’re allowed an hour for lunch, do you leave half an hour early and come back 20 minutes late?
•    If you’re allowed a travel allowance when you’re on company duty, do you exaggerate your expenses and pocket the difference?
•    If you know there’s work to be done, do you still call in sick because you have something better to do?
•    If you are the kind who conserves energy at home by switching off all the lights each time you leave a room and by turning off all electrical appliances when you’re not using them, do you leave the lights in your office and your computer on all night when you’re done for the day?
•    If you’re part of a team, do you sit back and let your teammates handle all the work?
•    Worse, do you take credit for the results even though you know you’ve not contributed as much as you should?
•    If you know your boss is not coming in for the day, do you slack off?
•    Do you spend all day in your office, hanging around the cafeteria, the basketball court, the gym, or anywhere else except your office?

If you’ve answered yes to even one of the above questions, then you need to take another look at your work ethics or lack of them. Ethical behavior as we all know, must come from within; our conscience must dictate what’s right and what’s wrong; and the more we listen to our conscience, the more ethical we become.


* This post was contributed by Holly McCarthy, who writes on the subject of online universities. She invites your feedback at hollymccarthy12 at gmail dot com

2009 Ethics Film Series at Duke University: "GOTTA GO: Ethics in Exile"

Each spring, the Kenan Institute for Ethics sponsors a film series in conjunction with the Film/Video/Digital Department for Duke’s Spring Screen/Society. The films provide popular and accessible vehicles for talking about ethics around a particular theme. Each series offers rich opportunities for debate and discussion on ethical issues for audiences from both the Duke and surrounding communities.

The 2009 series, “Gotta Go: Ethics in Exile,” features four documentaries about people forced into exile, whether by political, economic, or natural causes. They find themselves questioning what constitutes home, who constitutes authority, and where a sense of meaning and truth resides. The films encourage us to consider the ideas of place and displacement. This year's series is cosponsored by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.Tuesdays, 7:00 pm