Christopher Michaelson

Moral Hazard in Pediatrics

“Moral hazard” is a term familiar in economics and business ethics that illuminates why rational parties sometimes choose decisions with bad moral outcomes without necessarily intending to behave selfishly or immorally. The term is not generally used in medical ethics. Decision makers such as parents and physicians generally do not use the concept or the word in evaluating ethical dilemmas. They may not even be aware of the precise nature of the moral hazard problem they are experiencing, beyond a general concern for the patients seemingly excessive burden. This article brings the language and logic of moral hazard to pediatrics. The concept reminds us that decision makers in this context are often not the primary party affected by their decisions. It appraises the full scope of risk at issue when decision makers decide on behalf of others and leads us to separate, respect, and prioritize the interests of affected parties.

Business in the Work and World of David Foster Wallace

Arguably, no author, scholar, or other commentator has depicted the condition of turn-of-the-century American capitalism as entertainingly and insightfully as David Foster Wallace. His central concern was the allure of the gifts of commercial production and the unwitting complicity of both producers and consumers in perpetuating entertainment at the expense of the examined life. This article uses ethical criticism and literary critical theory to explore the subjective experience of business in Wallace’s work, in correspondence with scholarship on institutional theory and marketing ethics, to point toward normative conclusions about how, in Wallace’s words, to live consciously.

Literature and the Canonical Values of Capitalism

The canonical texts of capitalism come from political theory, military theory, biology, and, of course, economics. A canon signifies and shapes human values and practices, but notably, the capitalist canon is not typically perceived to include works of the arts and humanities. This paper explores how attention to aesthetic values in the canon, particular through works of narrative literature, might influence ethical practices of capitalism.

Institutional Constraints and Enablers An Introduction to the Special Topic Forum on Extreme Operating Environments

This article is the guest editors’ introduction to the Special Topic Forum on Extreme Operating Environments appearing in Business & Society. The forum includes two articles accepted after review and revision. The two articles address the macro-level aspects of business’s role in society in terms of accessing resources and markets and in terms of being a change agent or enabler to promote a better or more stable local economy. The articles also provide case studies of businesses developing, getting access to resources and markets, and affecting the larger institutional environment despite great uncertainty and harsh operating environments where the traditional assumptions of stability and security are not available. This Special Topic Forum is published in cooperation with Business & Professional Ethics Journal which, working with the guest editors, has published two other articles that address the more micro-level aspects and the ethical dilemmas business may face in extreme operating environments.

Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “Moral Hazard in Pediatrics”

Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “Moral Hazard in Pediatrics” Donald Brunnquell & Christopher M. Michaelson To cite this article: Donald Brunnquell & Christopher M. Michaelson (2016) Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “Moral Hazard in Pediatrics”, The American Journal of Bioethics, 16:8, W3-W4, DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2016.1188180 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2016.1188180

Useless and Disinterested: How Literature Makes Us Better

Can reading literary fiction render you a more emotionally intelligent neuroscientist? Will assigning good stories in medical and bioethics classrooms cultivate a generation of more empathetic clinicians? For that matter, do encounters with great literature turn us into more ethical persons? If recent research on the science and psychology of stories is taken to its seemingly logical conclusion, then we can be hopeful about all of these potential outcomes. We might expect to realize benefits across research, teaching, and practice—the domains by which we conventionally measure performance in applied, academic disciplines. All it might require is for scholars, students, and clinicians to read some novels with medical plots—say, Verghese’s Cutting for Stone, and Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych. In her recent target article in AJOB Neuroscience, Lindsey Grubbs (2016) warns against jumping to easy conclusions while considering two studies that could reinforce these hopes: one that examines the effects of reading novels on brain connectivity, and the other, “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind” (Kidd and Castano 2013). These studies can be grouped with a body of work about the science and psychology of stories that explore other, related claims about literature. The stationary act of reading can facilitate the sensation of spatial transformation, yielding, for example, “transportation” (Green 2004) and “elevation” (Haidt 2003). This movement, while not physically real, is a form of “cognitive play” that may develop the ability to adapt to new circumstances (Boyd 2009), creating openness to change (Oatley 1999). These capabilities suggest that stories may play a role in human evolution and advancement (Gottschall 2012). Interdependent with their potential practical value to survival, stories could have moral value in particular, nurturing such faculties as emotional intelligence (Nussbaum 2001), empathy (Mar 2011), and cooperation (Zak 2013). As a researcher, teacher, and practitioner in applied business ethics, I hope that this story of how stories benefit human morality is true. Yet as a humanities scholar by training (philosophy— ethics and aesthetics), I empathize with Grubbs’s misgivings about the perceived “incursion” of science into literature. She tempers that pessimism with an ultimately constructive mission, suggesting how cooperation among scientists with humanists could improve research. Her article focuses on three areas of concern: questions and methods, neurohype, and social implications. The remainder of my commentary responds to the concerns that I infer are behind Grubbs’s discomfort with the fundamental questions and methods of Kidd and Castano’s article. In doing so, I hope to reconcile my empathy for those concerns with my enthusiasm for advances in the science and psychology of stories. First, Grubbs takes issue with a distinction that is elemental to Kidd and Castano’s comparison between the effects of so-called “literary” and those of “popular fiction.” As Grubbs suggests, current approaches to the study of literature eschew such evaluative terms, regarding potentially any art object to be worthy of study. To designate art as such is to grant it political significance, according to modern critical theory. Such claims about the ineluctable “interestedness” of literary study are in part a reaction to another school of aesthetic thought, that pure aesthetic judgments are “disinterested.” Disinterestedness is characterized by a calm regard for the work of art, focused on the object itself rather than its political and cultural milieu, and not motivated by self-concern. The belief that this is the correct state of mind with which to regard aesthetic objects still influences the design of art museums and galleries with their quietude and eggshell walls that promote disinterested attention. It is important not to confuse disinterestedness with the absence of interest. Although we do not want bioethicists and neuroscientists to be uninterested, we might want them to attempt to be disinterested, so they can regard our data with undistracted eyes and minds, while attending to the needs of the person before them. Grubbs hesitates to assert that some fiction is aesthetically bad, but she does imply that some literature is ethically bad—that is, I take her anecdote about Richardson’s Pamela to suggest that moralistic literature can promote