Professors Shawn Klein and Michael Perry are organizing the Third Annual Rockford University Sports Studies Symposium, to be held in April 2014. The theme is “Defining Sport.”
Here is the full Call for Abstracts.
Professor Klein is also the Sports Ethicist — check out his podcast series at iTunes.
Kaizen Weekly Review highlights activities of The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship and recent business ethics and entrepreneurship news.
Editor: Virginia Murr
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The Capitalist Heart Surgeon
Dubbed “India’s Walmart of Heart Surgery,” Devi Shetty is a heart surgeon-turned-businessman who has cut the cost of heart surgery by 98 percent to just US$1,555. The same procedure costs US$106,385 at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic. This article explains that Shetty keeps the costs low in his 21 medical centers by buying cheaper scrubs, using air conditioning only in the most essential rooms, and through other efficiencies..
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Silicon Valley’s Start-up Machine
Y Combinator is an organization founded by Paul Graham that accelerates the early phases for start-ups. Its first graduating class in 2005 included Reddit, Infogami, Dropbox, Airbnb, and Stripe. Y Combinator holds two three-month sessions every year. During that time, start-up founders receive mentoring at regular meetings with each of Y Combinator’s partners. Read more.
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Censorship Inhibiting Entrepreneurship in Quebec
According to the province of Quebec’s censors, “Wellarc” is too English to be used as a business name. The entrepreneur who proposed the name is Xavier Menard, a 17 year old from Quebec. Menard is up against Quebec’s Bill 101, which requires that businesses in Quebec have French names and signs. According to this article, Menard responded to the government with a video in which he argues that it doesn’t make sense to limit the choices of Quebec businesses when the province has a high unemployment rate..
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Essential Advice for Success
According to Bob Lefsetz, embracing individuality is an essential cornerstone to success. Other factors include: the personal touch, quality over quantity, and understanding that talent is not god-given. According to Lefstez, “None of us are perfect, we can all improve, we all make mistakes. But let me be clear, ignore the haters, ignore advice unless you’re asking for it.” Read the article..
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From Poverty to Prosperity
In this post, Stephen Hicks enthusiastically reviews Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz’s From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities and the Lasting Triumph over Scarcity. Hicks likes the authors’ emphasis on the foundational economic role of entrepreneurs, their insistence upon the study of real human agents, and their assumption that “win-win social relations are normal and the proper benchmark, not the usual expectation of zero-sum.”.
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Defining Competition
As part of a recent seminar, Shawn Klein (a.k.a. the Sports Ethicist), developed a genus-species definition of competition. What do competition in business and sports have in common? Is war properly described as a competition? Are two animals fighting over mates or food competing? Klein elaborates on why certain aspects of competition were rejected and others included. Read more.
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See you in two weeks!
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Previous Issues of Kaizen Weekly Review.
Kaizen Weekly Review highlights activities of The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship and recent business ethics and entrepreneurship news.
Editor: Virginia Murr
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Do Privacy Rights Matter?
Americans have had a lot to digest lately. Not only was it reported that phone companies have been selling customers’ personal information to third parties, but Americans have also learned that their government has been tracking their metadata through their phones. Do Americans care? According to this summation of several surveys from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, “the importance of privacy has steadily trended upward over seven years.”.
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The Future is Bright: Amazing Teen Innovators
Worried about the ingenuity of our next generation? Consider this: An 18-year-old has developed a capacitor that charges cellphones in under 30 seconds. In the booming market of apps, a teen has contributed an emergency-notification app. One teen designed a low-cost, self-driving car. Another teen has created a single-person submarine. And this 15-year-old budding scientist has developed a fast, low-cost blood test to detect pancreatic cancer..
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Big Win for Monsanto’s Intellectual Property Rights
Would innovation happen without intellectual property rights and the profit-motive? In a major win for intellectual property rights, the Supreme Court recently decided in Bowman v. Monsanto Co. that the farmer, Vernon Bowman, had infringed on Monsanto’s patent rights when he copied and used the seeds he yielded from a crop of Monsanto, patent-protected seeds. Read more about the case and decision.
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Is Entrepreneurship the Key to School Reform?
At a recent event in New York, Dell and a student advocacy group, StudentVoice, hosted a day-long conference devoted to exploring ways schools can introduce entrepreneurship in the classroom. According to Zak Malamed, co-founder of StudentVoice, “Research shows that it’s entrepreneurial innovation that will lead to global economic recovery, and it’s important to nurture this entrepreneurial spirit from a young age.” Read more about the event and panelists.
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New Chapters from Audiobook Version of Explaining Postmodernism
Two more chapters from Stephen Hicks’s Explaining Postmodernism audiobook have been released. Chapter Four takes an in-depth look at “The Climate of Collectivism” in nineteenth- and twentieth-century political thought, and Chapter Five explores how the “The Crisis of Socialism” led to Postmodernism.
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Five for Fighting: Is Hockey Fighting Justified?
For many hockey fans, fights are a natural and enjoyable part of the game. But is the fighting justified? The Sports Ethicist, Shawn Klein, takes a look at the most common justifications for hockey fights. In his assessment, Klein opines that “it is a lack of sportsmanship and self-control, and overall does more harm to the sport than any purported benefits.”
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See you in two weeks!
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Previous Issues of Kaizen Weekly Review.
Kaizen Weekly Review highlights activities of The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship and recent business ethics and entrepreneurship news.
Editor: Virginia Murr
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Netflix: Back from the Brink of Destruction
It was a business disaster. In 2011, Netflix rolled out Qwikster, which “tried to both raise prices and spin off its DVD-by-mail business.” The media wrote scathing reviews and Netflix shares plunged. How did a Netflix CEO Reed Hastings bring his company back from the brink of destruction? According to Richard Greenfield, a media analyst for BTIG, “He [Reed] dusted himself off, stood back up and started running.” Read more.
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The Rub with Workplace Ethics
What influences employees to speak out about ethical violations in the workplace? To find out, University of Michigan professor David Mayer and his colleagues conducted three studies. According to Mayer, the results “contradict conventional wisdom that the personal characteristics of an employee drive his or her decision to speak up.”
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The Watch of the Future
This Tech Crunch article reviews the Ressence Type 3, a liquid-filled mechanical watch with a nearly featureless face that winds automatically. The dials look like they are seamlessly embedded in the face surface, which spins. As well, a pressure valve compensates for temperature-related changes in the liquid. View the product page.
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Internet Ethics Problems from Silicon Valley
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics in Silicon Valley has a web page dedicated to ethics and the Internet. The site hosts a series of brief videos on key issues in Internet ethics, as identified by Silicon Valley leaders. Participants include the co-founders of Adobe and Reputation.com, as well as the CEOs of Symantec and Seagate.
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The Future of Art
In April, Stephen Hicks attended a meeting of minds in California to discuss key issues in representational aesthetics in preparation for next year’s Representational Art Conference (TRAC). TRAC 2014 will focus on the aesthetic principles and values implicit in the representational art of the twenty-first century. The conference will be held March 2 – 5, 2014 in Ventura Beach, California.
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Taking a Swing at the Designated Hitter Rule
The Sports Ethicist’s radio program recently covered the Designated Hitter Rule in MLB. The rule has been in place for 40 years, yet still remains as controversial as ever. Does it remove the need for managerial strategy? Does it add excitement and offense to the game? Listen here as Professor Shawn Klein, Zachary Wolf, Daryn Streed, as well as Professors Matt Flamm and Mike Perry discuss the DH rule and its effects on baseball.
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With summer upon us, we will be producing the Kaizen Weekly Review on a biweekly basis. See you in two weeks!
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Previous Issues of Kaizen Weekly Review.
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Kaizen Weekly Review highlights activities of The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship and recent business ethics and entrepreneurship news.
Editor: Virginia Murr
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John Mackey’s Conscious Capitalism
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has made waves with his book Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. According to this Forbes review, the theme of conscious capitalism is “that business is good because it creates value, it is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange, it is noble because it can elevate our existence, and it is heroic because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity.” Below is a Mackey’s discussion of Conscious Capitalism with Tucker Carlson at the Cato Institute.
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Business Ethics Case Studies: Rent Control
Stephen Hicks has released Rent Control, the first in his Business Ethics Case Studies series. Forthcoming cases will include Minimum Wages, The Tragedy of the Commons, Laetrile and Experimental Cancer Drugs, and the FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine.”
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Audiobook Version of Explaining Postmodernism
Hicks’s Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault is being released as an audiobook. Listen to the first chapter, “What Postmodernism Is.” Explaining Postmodernism has been translated into three languages, with a Spanish translation forthcoming. It is also available in e-book format.
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The Sports Ethicist Takes on the Miami Heat
The Miami Heat recently caused a stir when the players refused the traditional after-game handshake with the Chicago Bulls. This prompted announcer Jeff Van Gundy to state that sports “shouldn’t be warm and friendly.” Shawn Klein, aka “the Sports Ethicist,” disagrees. According to Klein, “[T]he very essence of good sportsmanship is that when the game is over, you step outside that frame of mind.” Read the rest of his critique.
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Magatte Wade: Model of Leadership
Da Promoter hails Tiossan owner Magatte Wade as a female model of leadership. This article states that Wade’s story “is proof that with determination, determination, courage, and boldness, we can achieve everything.” Wade was the subject of a recent CEE interview in which she shares her personal successes and challenges as well as her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
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How to Measure Innovation
How should innovative companies be evaluated? Currently, there is no industry consensus on what factors best demonstrate the success of innovation. According to this article, there isn’t even agreement on such fundamental questions as “what defines an idea?” or “what does ‘success’ mean?” The author of the article believes there should be one standardized methodology. What do you think?
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See you next week!
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Previous Issues of Kaizen Weekly Review.
Kaizen Weekly Review highlights activities of The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship and recent business ethics and entrepreneurship news.
Editor: Virginia Murr
.
Innovative Education: the Computer in the Wall
The winner of this year’s one million dollar TED prize and professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, Professor Sugata Mitra, set up a computer in a New Dehli slum, connected it to the internet, and placed it inside of a wall, protected only by a shield of plastic. After making the mouse accessible, he left. According to this Wired article, Mitra came back eight hours later and saw kids browsing the Internet in English, a language they do not speak.
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Should Olympic Athletes Be More Moral Than Other Athletes?
Professor Shawn Klein, a.k.a. The Sports Ethicist, discusses morality and rule-breaking by analyzing the last Olympics. The London Olympics generated several controversies, including badminton and soccer teams trying to lose or draw to set up more favorable seeding in the next round and a swimmer who admitted to taking illegal, extra kicks in his gold medal race. According to Klein, the fact that some people are “athletically excellent does not mean they are also morally excellent.” Read the full blog post.
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The Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy
This article by Professor Noel D. Campbell introduces the Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, launched in 2012. According to the abstract, “JEPP was created to encourage and disseminate quality research about the vital relationships among institutions, entrepreneurship and economic outcomes.” The latest issue covers such topics as creative destruction and entrepreneurship across disciplines.
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Public Policy, Objectivism, and Entrepreneurship
Stephen Hicks gave a talk on Public Policy, Objectivism, and Entrepreneurship at the 2012 Atlas Summit in Washington, DC. Some of his themes included: Our schizophrenic public policy culture — health, sex, religion, money; what wealth is; entrepreneurism as a cultural asset; Objectivism’s entrepreneurial ethic; and principled strategy in a mixed economy. Hicks will be speaking again at the 2013 Atlas Summit.
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Shawn Klein’s New Sports Ethicist Radio Program
The Sports Ethicist Show premiered on Rockford University Radio this week. Each week Klein and guests will discuss ethical and philosophical issues that arise in and around sport. The first episode on “What is Sport?” featured Professor Michael Perry. Listen to or download the podcast.
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Can Aerobic Activity Improve Executive Function?
Among other things, executive brain function helps us to plan, organize, and formulate strategies. Is it possible to improve this all-important brain function? A study from the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review gives evidence that aerobic activity can do just that. Read more about the study.
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Previous Issues of Kaizen Weekly Review.
Channel 13 News came by the CEE office today to interview Dr. Shawn Klein about sports ethics and Lance Armstrong’s use of performance enhancing drugs. Watch WREX Morning News (January 18) or check out their video page if you missed it.
Lance Armstrong’s much-publicized interview with Oprah, in which he reportedly confesses to using performance enhancing drugs, will air tonight (January 17, 9pm ET, OWN). CNN asked columnists, authors, and sportswriters whether we should “give Lance another chance.” CEE professor Shawn Klein was among the responses CNN published. Dr. Klein wrote:
“After years of adamant denials and protestations of his innocence, Lance Armstrong has reportedly come forward to admit his use of prohibited performance enhancing drugs. If Armstrong is sincerely contrite and forthright in his apology, most people, including myself, will forgive him for his use of prohibited drugs.
He cheated in a sport known for its widespread cheating; that doesn’t justify his use but it does put his actions into an understandable context that makes it easier to excuse the use. Further, if Armstrong cooperates with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, his lifetime ban from cycling ought to be reduced to something more reasonable.
The more troubling aspects of the Armstrong case are the allegations that he harassed and intimidated team members and potential whistle-blowers. Violating the arbitrary rules of a sport shows a character flaw and poor judgment, but it is hard to see who else is truly harmed by such actions. But to threaten, intimidate and coerce others (either to use performance enhancing drugs themselves or to cover up his team’s use) causes real harm.
Even if only some of these reports are accurate, Armstrong will have to do more than sit on Oprah’s couch to earn forgiveness.”
Read more opinions on Armstrong’s confession here.
Related: Shawn Klein on the arguments against the use of performance enhancing technologies.
From Professor Shawn Klein’s Sports Ethicist blog:
Call for Abstracts
Fandom, Fantasy, and Fitness
The 2nd Annual Rockford University Sports Studies Symposium
Date: April 19, 2013
Grace Roper Lounge
Rockford University
5050 E. State. St.
Rockford, IL 61108
Fans play a central role at all levels and within various aspects of sport, so any study of sport would do well to consider their influences in connection to fandom, fantasy, and fitness. A specific and growing area of fandom, fantasy sports, illustrates a concrete and complex way fans relate to and even affect sport. Moreover, the implicit and explicit connection of sport to fitness offers another important way that fans interact with sport. This year’s symposium seeks to explore and examine these aspects of the relationship between fan and sport.
We invite scholars from all disciplines to submit an abstract on these themes. This symposium will then bring together several panels of scholars to discuss these themes. The focus of each panel will depend, in part, on the submitted abstracts. Each presenter on a panel will have 20 minutes for their presentation. This will be followed by 30 minutes of a combined Q&A.
Abstract Submission:
Submissions are welcome on this theme of Fandom, Fantasy, and Fitness, or other related issues arising in the study of Sport. Abstract should be 300-500 words. Send via email (as PDF) to SSS13[at]Rockford.edu
Deadline: Friday, January 25th, 2013.
Notification of Acceptance: Monday, February 4th, 2013.
If you have any questions, please email SSS13[at]Rockford.edu, contact Shawn Klein (Assistant Professor, Philosophy Department) at 815-226-4115, or Michael Perry (Assistant Professor, English Department) at 815-226-4098.
CEE Professor Shawn Klein was interviewed by another major publication, The New York Times, on sports ethics. The article discusses bending the rules in sports, and whether an athlete who has attained sports excellence has necessarily attained moral excellence.
