Three essays by philosopher David Kelley on morality and freedom: Altruism and Capitalism; Two Strains of Altruism; and Generosity and Self-Interest. Dr. Kelley spoke at Rockford College last year.

Here is the abstract for Elaine Sternberg’s Just Business (Oxford University Press), an Aristotelian approach to business ethics that, refreshingly, does not take “business ethics” to be an oxymoron.

The Center is pleased to announce the winner of the Spring 2008 Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship Essay Contest: Erik Torres for his essay “Social and Business Entrepreneurs: Big Bucks and Some Change.”

The four runner-ups are (in no particular order): Richard Walters, “False Advertising as an Impediment to Reason”; Almir Causevic, “Final Paper on Minimum Wage: Case Studies at Coyote Blog”; Andrew Tuttle, “Italian Tax Law: Justified Fraud?”; Scott Danielson, “The New Belgium Beer Company.” Congratulations to the winners!

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.

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?

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.

Robert Bradley, Ph.D., visited the center and Rockford College on March 28, 2007 and gave a presentation to an audience of about 115 students, professors, and interested members of the greater Rockford community. Dr. Bradley was a longtime employee of Enron, the collapsed corporate giant. During the company’s last years he served as speech writer and regulatory advisor for Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO, who was convicted in May 2006 on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy. Bradley is now president of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) in Houston, Texas, and is completing his sixth book, Political Capitalism: Insull, Enron, and Beyond. His previous books have been on energy history and policy. The theme of Dr. Bradley’s talk was how philosophy—not only business economics and political economy—is key to unraveling the Ken Lay Paradox to understand the rise and fall of Enron.