Marilynn P. Fleckenstein

Service Learning in Business Ethics

Those of us engaged in the education of future businesspersons need to ask about the efficacy of our efforts. The business person is, first and foremost, a member of the community, a citizen, attempting to meet the needs of that community by providing goods and services.The general public often perceives the businessperson as violating the ethical standards of the community. Business risks losing its social legitimacy by such activity. Universities are the appropriate institutions in which to inculcate the importance of ethics and should go as far as it can to influence the ethical reasoning of graduates. However, research suggests that the traditional way of integrating ethics education into required functional courses actually results in a decline in moral reasoning. It is suggested that ethics educating needs to be personalized based on the individual student and that there is a need for experiential learning methods which would supplement and enhance standard classroom based ethics education. An appropriate goal for business ethics courses would be to make students aware of the ethical and social dimensions of the business decision making process.I suggest that a service-learning pedagogy would be one way to educate the business student in ethics. An integrated service project stressing rights and responsibilities could create a feeling of what it means to be a member of a community and would emphasize the importance of social involvement.In this paper, I explore some of the roots of service in higher education and the efficacy of service-learning in business ethics.

Ethics in Tourism-Reality or Hallucination

Many professional organizations have established codes of ethics which members are expected to adhere to. These ethical codes serve an important function by containing the rules that govern the conduct of the members of the profession. Should the tourism industry be governed by a code of ethics? Is it important enough and large enough to spend a lot of time and energy developing a code of ethics since tourism is based on service rather than a physical good, which does not lend itself to standardization or control? This paper will examine these issues.

When trust is betrayed: Religious institutions and white collar crime

In 1990, the comptroller of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo was charged with the embezzlement of eight million dollars of money belonging to the Diocese, He was subsequently convicted and served several years in state prison. Using this case as a starting point, this paper looks at several examples of white-collar crime and religious institutions. Should justice or mercy be the operative virtue in dealing with such criminals?

The "Right to Associate" in Catholic Social Thought

Among the rights of workers articulated in Catholic social thought is the right to associate or the right to form associations of working persons. This right has been discussed in Church documents since the time of the publication of Rerum Novarum in 1891. It is this right that is addressed in this paper.

Globalization and the Nations of the South: Plan for Development or Path to Marginalization

Differences between the countries of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres recommend drastic changes in political, economic, and social attitudes, especially among the nations of the North. Especially significant is their influence on the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization and their resulting imposition of policies favorable to their own interests at the cost of those of the Southern nations.