The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship has invited three interesting guest speakers to Rockford College this semester:

William Kline: David Hume and Ethics

March 17

Dr. William Kline is Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies at University of Illinois, Springfield. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He has published in the Journal of Value Inquiry and the Journal of Business Ethics.

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Jeffrey P. Orduno: Property Rights and the Law

March 30

Jeffrey Orduno is an associate in the law firm of McGreevy Williams. He is a Rockford College alum and received his JD from John Marshall Law School. His practice includes business litigation and transactions, as well as matters related to land use and construction.

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Douglas B. Rasmussen: Aristotle and Contemporary Ethics

April  23 & 26

Dr. Douglas Rasmussen is professor of philosophy at St. John’s University in New York. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Marquette University. Dr. Rasmussen has authored numerous articles in a variety of journals and is coauthor (with Douglas J. Den Uyl) of Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (2005).

All who are interested may attend. We hope to see you there!

Also, view the PDF of our flyer.

Locations and exact times forthcoming.

For more information, contact CEE [at] Rockford.edu

Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, talked recently with Fall 2009 guest speaker Dr. Jerry Kirkpatrick about why having a philosophical background helps businesspeople attain greater clarity and confidence in making important, ethically-charged decisions. Below are parts I and II of the interview.

Part I:

Part II:

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.

Professor Stephen Hicks will teach a new course this fall 2008 semester at Rockford College: Entrepreneurship and Ethics. The purpose of this course is to integrate entrepreneurship, business history, and business ethics. It will consist of case studies of major entrepreneurs in modern history, e.g., Commodore Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Samuel Insull, John Johnson, Martha Stewart, Bill Gates, and others. Part of each case study involves learning the entrepreneur’s business practices and how he or she achieved business success. What traits and practices did they have: intelligence, risk-tolerance, leadership, ambition, ruthlessness? And part of each case study will involve learning about the ethical controversies their activities generated: Were they “predatory competitors,” “monopolists,” “robber barons”—or were they extraordinarily productive individuals who benefited both themselves and their customers? Students read and analyze business histories and biographies by both proponents and detractors. See the Entrepreneurship and Ethics course flyer.

Rockford College philosophy professor Stephen Hicks’s essay entitled “Ethics and Economics” was published in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, edited by David Henderson, Ph.D. The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics is the second edition of The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics, which was published to acclaim in 1993, and includes essays by “Nobel Prize winners Gary Becker and George Stigler, former presidential economic advisors, financial columnists, and economists such as Armen Alchian, Don Boudreaux, Deepak Lal, Anna Schwartz, Lawrence Summers, and Murray Rothbard.”