"Perspectives on the Profession and Vocation of Ministry: Ethical Implications"

Maureen Muldoon, University of Windsor
 

In this paper, the concept of clergy as a profession and vocation are explored through the works of a number of authors. Clergy perform a number of diverse tasks and functions in a number of different contexts. Clergy may live out their ministry based on their own models and images of the ministry. At times this work may appear as social service while at other times the clergy may be doing tasks which are unique to clergy such as preaching or officiating at a sacrament. In examining the status of the clergy as professional, this group raises a variety of divergences and convergences with other professional groups. It is these convergences which can lead to the conclusion that a code of ethics is necessary while the divergences in their practice reveal how limiting a code of ethics may be in terms of their "sacred calling."
 
 
 

"Wisdom, Pessimism, and 'Mirth.' Reflections on the Contribution of Old Testament Wisdom Literature to Business Ethics"

Vincent P. Branick
 

The need to control the future can easily lead some in business to unethical forms of scheming and manipulation of persons. Proverbs and Sirach, books from Old Testament Wisdom literature, suggest an approach to the future by a present commitment to righteousness as a key to future success. However, Job and Ecclesiastes, books from the same body of literature, protest the difficulty of this commitment, insisting in effect on a "no guarantees" approach to the future and divine blessings of success. Ecclesiastes directs us to enjoy our work as it is at hand in the present. The attitude can be found in some modern corporations recognized for their ethics.
 
 
 

"University of Dayton Student Recycling Ethics-Indicators, Influences, and Challenges"

Kelly L. Stanforth
 

Only 46% of UD students recycle. To investigate influences on recycling behavior, Christian Ethics and the Environment students worked with the student Recycling Coordinator and conducted 500 surveys to assess knowledge of campus recycling, family recycling, class year, gender, major, campus housing and explanations for recycling behavior. Greatest recycling was in students from families that recycle (81%), females (55%), underclass (51%) and environmental majors (77%). UD had a positive influence on 8% of students from non-recycling families who now recycle. Students demonstrated knowledge about student recycling performance and litter but cited inconvenience and laziness as reasons for not recycling. Environmental knowledge and social responsibility positively influenced recycling. UD is being compared with recycling at other religious, private, and public universities to examine religious influence. This study suggests the need for explicit classroom and service learning education in ethics, justice, and the environment so that students of all majors can develop an environmental ethic.
 
 
 

"Public Service and Evolving Standards of Ethics"

John Alan Cohan
 

In public life, the exercise of power is ongoing and necessary, and therefore ethical issues are pervasive and unavoidable. Ethical norms are incorporated whenever a public official exercises power over others. In a representative form of democracy we require ethical conduct in order to legitimize the authority of the officeholder. The topic of ethics of public service is complex, diverse, and problematic; yet, the belief that these guardians of the public trust must successfully navigate the waters of political ethics remains an integral tenet of American political thought. Integrity, respect for persons, willingness to defer immediate gratification, confidence that progress is possible and that human action can shape events, compassion and sympathy for the ideas and hopes of others, respect for rules and traditions, preference for that which unites over that which separates, and willingness to compromise are qualities that public officials need as we enter the new millennium.
 
 
 

"Price and the Professions"

Jim Edwards
 

Is there a relationship between price and the level of service offered by a professional? Does the imposition of a fee schedule or maximum reimbursable amount for medical, legal, architectural or engineering services affect the quality of services provided? Is it appropriate for a professional, who by definition provides a service using judgment and art, to reduce the level of effort in response to a mandated schedule of fees?

Today, the medical, legal, architecture and engineering professions are under siege by those who want to limit cost. HMO organizations, insurance companies, and State and Federal governments are limiting the fees charged by medical professionals. Lawyers are now being required to submit fee schedules and not-to-exceed amounts for litigation and other services. Architects and Engineers, who traditionally worked on a qualification-based selection, must now agree to fixed fees prior to beginning work.

The tension for the professional is that he/she has taken an oath to work for the public good and to protect life and safety without mention of compensation. The basis of discussion for this presentation is whether or not the imposition of a fee schedule should or does compromise the quality or degree of service rendered by the professional.
 
 
 

"A Look at a Few Typical Ethical Dilemmas in Business from Different Ethical Perspectives"

Elizabeth Gustafson, Paul Grodecki, Karen Crim, and Loy Wiley
 

The panel will focus on the dilemmas, options, and consequences of a few common, applied ethical problems in business. They will identify employee's options and the probable consequences of each option. They will make use of different ethical perspectives (e.g. pragmatic, beneficent, or no-harm approach) to determine the viable options of each dilemma. Participants in the session will be engaged in a discussion of the application of ethics to a focused business situation.
 
 
 

"Integrity Capacity, Professional Education, and the Crisis in Professional Responsibility"

Joseph A. Petrick and John F. Quinn
 

The authors delineate the crisis in professional responsibility and propose the integrity capacity construct, with its four dimensions (process, judgment, development, and system dimensions), as a framework for analyzing and resolving moral complexity in professional ethics issues at the individual and collective levels. They claim that moral progress in professional education can be enhanced by four action steps that improve professional capability to regularly handle moral complexity by demonstrating process, judgment, developmental, and system integrity capacity.
 
 
 

"Ethics for the Professions: A Model for an Undergraduate Minor"

John Millard and Ann P. Stankiewicz, OP
 

Part One: (Ann P. Stankiewicz) The liberal arts college, in particular the institution under religious auspices, is in a privileged position for preparing young people for the world of the professions. In this presentation, we will offer a framework for a minor in Ethics for the Professions. Given the time limitations, we will develop the BOOKENDS of this minor. The minor begins with a foundations course. The essential components of the first course must be a true understanding of the nature of person and community. The second half of our presentation will focus on the importance of bringing together theory and practice.

Part Two: (John Millard) After students have been grounded in ethics through their study of the person and the common good in the foundations course, they proceed in the middle stage of the program to take three courses from among the ethics courses offered by the Philosophy Department. Upon completion of their elective courses, students are ready to bring together what they have learned to address a particular ethical problem. They do this in stage three of the minor program. This presentation will explain those parts of the program which follow and build upon the foundations course.
 
 
 

"Ecology, Globalization, and Technology: Weaving a Sustainable "Global Ethic" for Marianist Education Today"

Leanne M. Jablonski
 

Major movements in the past generation have permanently changed the way humans experience the earth, communicate with one another, and utilize resources. Has our awareness caught up with our reality? With globalization, our local choices are "glocal," and impact the multi-national abiotic, non-human biotic, and human communities. Through ecology, the study of our global "house," we know of bio-diversity loss and global warming, all exacerbated by human resource consumption and de-forestation. Advances in technology enable global information access and new opportunities for abuse and empathy. Amid these changes, what are the threads of our Christian, Catholic, Marianist educational tradition that are most critical to weave into our future? This paper will trace the vision of our Marianist founders, William Joseph Chaminade and Adele de Batz de Trenquelleon and imagine how they would locally apply the characteristics of Marianist Education today as we form professionals in a sustainable global ethic.
 

"Professional and Ethical Issues Raised through the Deprofessionalization of Teaching"

Thomas J. Lasley, II, and Carolyn Ridenour
 

At what cost are American schools attempting to foster student achievement? What professional and ethical issues are raised because of public policy that focuses on competition, internationally and regionally? Also, what "costs" redound to students in particular and education in general because of teacher deprofessionalization that may occur as a result of implementing systematic reform model schools? We assert that education, which already was wavering between semi-professional and professional status prior to 1990, will be even more compromised in terms of its capacity to serve the educational needs of students. Further, its inability to achieve full status will harm the long-term public good even if achievement results appear efficacious in terms of short-term academic goals. A series of problematics (or literature-based reflections) will be discussed in this paper. Each will be grounded on the extant literature, and each will focus on the relationships between emerging public policy and current educational practices.
 
 
 

"Obligations in the Global Economy"

Albert E. Prendergast
 

Access to global markets and access to worldwide free trade zones has given developed economies access to very cheap labor. Global retailers and manufacturers can jump to the cheapest labor markets. However, labor cannot jump and is held ransom to downward wage pressures. Who benefits from this cheap labor? What is the problem? Free markets, good communications, economical shipping, and most favored nation trading status give retailers the power and ability to move business to the lowest bidder regardless of the effect on local labor wage rates. The central questions are: Is it ethical to bid wages down to the point where people cannot live on the money they earn during a normal week? What are the obligations that various groups have to assure that workers can live on their wages and are not caught in economic slavery? Who has the obligation-retailers, manufacturers, host countries, import countries, developed nations, United Nations? These are some of the questions that should be asked as we look at the Chentex/Nien Hsing Textile Co. LTD. and Kohl's Department Stores vs. Central Sandinista de Trabajadores - Jose Benito CST Union situation in Nicaragua.
 
 
 

"The Role of the Novel in Professional Education"

Joyce Durham, Barbara Farrelly, James Biddle, and William Losito
 

An overview of Martha Nussbaum's view in Poetic Justice will be followed by explications of that view. Panelists will explore what this view might mean in relation to particular novels and teaching strategies. The presentation will examine the formation of moral imagination vis-avis professionals.
 
 
 

"Ethics in Consulting"

Alan A. Andolsen and Barbara Hilkert Andolsen
 

A review of the Code of Ethics developed by the Association of Management Consulting Firms, a global association representing over 80,000 consultants worldwide. The session will address issues from a day to day operational view explaining how individual firms and consultants conform to and go beyond the code. Mr. Andolsen will draw on his experience as Vice Chair of the Association of Management Consulting Firms and Chair of its Code of Ethics Committee.
 
 
 

"Incommensurability and the Character of the Professional

Richard Gull
 

Since each case confronted by the professional has incommensurable aspects and since the professional must make important decisions between incommensurable alternatives, the professional needs Aristotelian practical wisdom. The paper uses the Aristotelian idea of character to understand what the character of the professional ideally should be. The first section considers the nature of practical wisdom, drawing on the work of Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Lear. Then, using remarks by Daryl Koehn, Lawrence Haaorth, and Joan Callahan, some aspects of the professional's character - its perfection by scientia, its non-exploitiveness, and non-paternalism - and their relation to practical wisdom are discussed. In the second section, the importance of maintaining contradictoriness in the professional's character is explored by looking at what Bernard Williams and Anthony Kronman have said. Williams argues for developing an uneasy relation between profession specific dispositions and general dispositions to create a skepticism about the scope of the professional's wisdom. Kronman interprets Aristotelian practical wisdom as requiring both sympathy and detachment in order to confront incommensurable alternatives. Kronman's idea of the professional character is applied to the use of the "lesser evil" logic used by some to justify the dropping of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. Finally, a brief discussion of the film The Silence of the Lambs explores two vices of professionalism which arise when sympathy and detachment become extreme.
 
 
 

"Ethics and Fundraising"

Marilyn Fischer, Carla Birch, Angela Blackburn, Yvette Kelly-Fields, Rosemary Naulty, David Nehring, Robin Paris, Denise Rehg, and Winona Winkler Wendth
 

How can ethical considerations be part of ongoing professional practice and education? Our ethical decision-making model is used locally and nationally among fund raisers to help think through ethically troubling issues. We will talk about how we developed the model and then demonstrate how it is used with a specific case study. We will provide the audience with several other case studies, and if time permits, have the audience work through additional cases, either as a whole or in small groups. We will discuss ways in which other professions could adapt the model for their own use.
 
 
 

"Ethical Reasoning for Physicians and Dying Patients"

Robert Wade Kenny
 

Both the advocates and the opponents of euthanasia reason their way to the conclusion that they are in the right. But if we regard these various representations of "euthanasia ethics" as arguments rather than revelations, we gain new insights into how and why the issue appears and develops, insights that are distinct from those obtained by committing to either side. In this paper, arguments regarding the ethics of euthanasia will be examined as they influence a physician's responsibilities and judgments. Ethical stances based on such diverse foundations as medical pragmatism, logical consistency, religious obligation, and legal obligation, will be used to illustrate the sorts of reasoning that are provided for and by doctors. The paper will lead to an examination of whether such arguments can give a physician a sense of genuine accountability when faced with a real case, and what it would mean to our society and ourselves as individuals if such arguments could do this.