Employing Smokers: Economic, Political and Social Aspects

Hospitals in Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas (among others), stopped hiring smokers in 2010 and more countries were openly considering doing so. Paul Terpeluk, a director at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, said, “The trend line is getting pretty steep, and I’d guess that in the next few years you’d see a lot of major hospitals go this way.”[1] Indeed, this could come to be the case around the world. Various factors impact any comprehensive evaluation of a hospitals' policy against hiring smokers. The matter is therefore more complex than one might assume at first glance.
 

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

1. A. G. Sulzberger, “Hospitals Shift Smoking Bans to Smoker Ban,” The New York Times, February 10, 2011.

South Sudan as a Sovereign State: Governmental Change in Slow Motion

Announced in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, on February 7, 2011, voters in the oil-producing south overwhelming chose to secede from the Arab north. According to the New York Times, 98.83 percent of the more than 3.8 million registered voters in the south chose to separate from the north. The referendum had been agreed to as part of the peace agreement in 2005, after two long and brutal civil wars between the Arab Muslim north and the mostly animist and Christian south. “Today we received these results and we accept and welcome these results because they represent the will of the southern people,” President Bashir said in a statement on state television, according to Reuters. In Washington, the White House released a statement by President Obama congratulating the people of south Sudan and announcing “the intention of the United States to formally recognize southern Sudan as a sovereign, independent state in July 2011.” The New York Times reported that actual independence would be declared on July 9, when the peace agreement that set the stage for the vote expired. In the meantime, issues regarding citizenship, oil-revenue rights and the contested and volatile region of Abyei would be settled.

The full essay is at "South Sudan."

Efficiency, Corporate Social Responsibility and Full Employment: Squaring a Circle

The New York Times reported that President Obama urged American businesses on February 7, 2011 to “'get in the game' by letting loose trillions of dollars being held in reserves, saying that they can help create a 'virtuous cycle' of more sales, higher demand and greater profits that will put people back to work and turn around the sluggish economy.” Obama continued, “If there is a reason you don’t believe that this is the time to get off the sidelines — to hire and invest — I want to know about it. I want to fix it.” In the speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Obama said that companies have a responsibility to help the economy recover. The trouble is that responsibility is a rather vague term that can be variously applied. This is one reason why the corporate social responsibility concept could mean providing society with the products and services that are sought via the marketplace (e.g. Milton Friedman of the Chicago school) while meaning for others increasing corporate philanthropy to alleviate a society problem such as poverty. In other words, responsibility can be made concrete in various ways that can accommodate and indeed reflect the ideologies of those applying the term.

The full essay is at "Efficiency and CSR."