Looking for some office wall art? Motivation is out. Consider these darkly hilarious demotivational posters on apathy, cluelessness, compromise, conformity, flattery, idiocy, inspiration, irresponsibility, or mediocrity instead.
The Wall Street Journal reports on the growing trend of hiring highly-skilled stay-at-home mothers for short-term projects. It is a win-win situation: “Employers get lots of voltage, cheap, while the women get a skills update and a taste of the professional challenges they miss.”
In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: business ethicist Alexei Marcoux’s overview of the current state of the debate in the business ethics literature. Professor Marcoux spoke at Rockford College last October.
Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, and Cypress Semiconductor CEO T. J. Rodgers debate corporate responsibility: do profits or customer service come first?
Todd Royer’s Workination: Are You Fascinated With Your Career? is a book for people in search of a new career. A noteworthy quote: “Don’t wait for others to take care of you. The days when a parent-like corporation provided step-by-step promotions based on diligence and hard work are long gone. You are responsible for your own career decisions.” Read a review of the book here.
A recent article in The New York Times reports that more colleges are now offering courses and programs in entrepreneurship, giving students the first-hand experience of starting and running their own business: “According to the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., more than 2,000 colleges and universities now offer at least a class and often an entire course of study in entrepreneurship. That is up from 253 institutions offering such courses in 1985. More than 200,000 students are enrolled in such courses, compared with 16,000 in 1985.”
This week the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship is proud to welcome its guest speaker for the Spring Semester, Dr. Eric Mack. Dr. Mack (Ph.D., University of Rochester) is professor of philosophy at Tulane University and a faculty member of Tulane’s Murphy Institute of Political Economy. He has written extensively on the philosophical foundations of individual rights, property rights, markets, and toleration. He is currently working on a book on the political philosophy of John Locke.
Professor Mack will be speaking Friday, April 25th, at 3:00 pm in Scarborough 4, in connection with Professor Klein’s Business and Economic Ethics course. He will give a talk on the political philosopher Robert Nozick’s theory of entitlement, and the propensity of liberty to upset social patterns. Professor Mack’s talk is open to anyone and everyone interested.
Please contact us if you have any questions or would like more information.
According to the most recent Non-Employer Statistics published the U.S. Census Bureau, on average 2,356 people go into business for themselves every day. Their firms account for 78 percent of U.S. businesses and $951 billion in receipts.
“Among the fastest-growing industries are Web search portals (41.2 percent), Internet service providers (16.6 percent), nail salons (18 percent), electronic shopping and mail-order houses (12 percent), recreational vehicle dealers (12.1 percent) and landscaping services (11.1 percent).” The top five states in terms of growth in small businesses between 2004 and 2005 were the District of Columbia (9.6 percent), Nevada (7.7 percent), Florida (7.6 percent), Georgia (7.6 percent) and Utah (7.2 percent).
On April 5, Professor Stephen Hicks spoke at the annual conference of the Association for Private Enterprise Education on the topic “What Ethics Can Learn from Entrepreneurship.” The conference was held in Las Vegas, Nevada.
To be offered in the Fall 2008 semester. In this course students will consider a range of ethical, political, and economic issues about sports: Why are sports so universally popular? What physical and psychological values do they provide? Does the playing of sports develop good character? Why are many sports fans so fanatical? What is the proper place of sports in higher education? Is there anything wrong with ticket-”scalping”? How should mega-sports complexes be funded—politically or through the market? See the Sports Ethics flyer.
