Society for Business Ethics 2024 Annual Meeting

Paper Abstracts: Session 10

Session 10A: Risk, Privacy, and AI

• The E.U.’s AI Act: Hype Or Hope?
  • In light of the rise of generative AI and recent debates about the socio-political implications of large-language models and chatbots, this article investigates the E.U.’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), the world’s first major attempt by a government body to address and mitigate the potentially negative impacts of AI technologies. The article critically analyzes the AIA from a distinct economic ethics perspective, i.e., ‘ordoliberalism 2.0’ – a perspective currently lacking in the academic literature. It evaluates, in particular, the AIA’s ordoliberal strengths and weaknesses and proposes reform measures that could be taken to strengthen the AIA.
• Risk, Ruin, And Redemptive Mitigation
  • Using the doctrine of double effect, we theorize when it is unethical to invest in very risky businesses. Scholars have theorized when people may not invest in businesses based on the businesses’ goods or services but not their relative riskiness. Small investors can suffer ruinous harm, though, because of institutional investments in very risky businesses. The doctrine of double effect, in turn, has been developed for practical use in business ethics but has not been applied to questions about investing. We offer a novel interpretation of this doctrine that has two implications for investing ethics. First, decision makers may not pursue expected benefits that impose risks on others without trying to mitigate those risks. Second, investors may never influence others to invest in very risky businesses when the investors’ ability to benefit from the investments entails the risk of ruinous harm to others.
• Privacy And Property
  • This paper is about the widespread tendency to think of personal data as a kind of property and to view privacy issues in terms of the protection of a certain kind of property right. I’ll call this way of thinking about privacy: The Ownership Model. I articulate what I take to be the most plausible version of the ownership model. On this view, we have a very limited kind of ownership over our data: we own our data in the way that a beneficiary of a trust “owns” the trust’s assets. That is, we have a beneficial interest right in our data: the right to use and benefit from it, but not the other control and transfer rights associated with full ownership. As such, I’ll call the view that I defend the “Beneficial Ownership Model” of our privacy rights, and I’ll be contrasting it with other ways we might think about privacy in terms of data ownership. Though the Beneficial Ownership Model represents a relatively weak form of ownership, I’ll argue, its adoption would have profound consequences for the attention economy.

Session 10B: Markets, The State, And The Law

• Does The State Have An Obligation Not To Enforce The Law?
  • Does the State have an obligation not to enforce the law? Plenty of ink has been spilled on answering whether citizens have a duty to obey the State’s laws. And ample attention has been paid to specific circumstances where the State ostensibly has either the ability, or even an obligation, either not to enforce specific laws or not to enforce the law in particular ways. For one, the practical inability to respond to every legal violation underwrites prosecutorial discretion—a species of the State not enforcing the law. For another, a decade-plus advocacy against police violence has brought new urgency to the State’s duty not to selectively or pretextually enforce facially benign statutes so as that systematically discriminate against or marginalize minority groups. Finally, classic debates in analytic jurisprudence have long questioned whether unjust laws “count” as law; up for grabs here is state actors’ authority to decline to enforce morally wicked laws. But put aside the practical resources constraints, the laws that are obviously unjust, or that are unjustly applied. Even still, this project sketches several reasons to think there exists a freestanding, defeasible obligation on the State not to enforce its own law. This general obligation promises to unite the above examples under a single banner. Moreover, whatever else it requires, this obligation at least rules out a certain kind of maximalist law enforcement. In doing so, this obligation on the State not to enforce the law can clarify theorizing about overcriminalization, abolitionism, and criminal law minimalism.
• There Is No Exploitation Problem
  • If it is better to be exploited rather than neglected, how can it be impermissible to exploit if it is permissible to neglect? This paradox is called the ‘exploitation problem’. The present article argues the problem does not exist because no impermissible exchange can follow permissible neglect. The permissibility of neglect makes exploitation permissible as well; and if exploitation is impermissible, then so is neglect. Any assertion to the contrary only creates confusion, since it can only be supported by unreliable intuitions, which are very difficult to justify without appealing to ad-hoc hypotheses with implausible implications.
• The Point Of The Market System: If Efficiency, Then Equality
  • What is the point of the market system? Efficiency typically is treated as having a special (or exclusive) status as the point or characteristic aim of the market system. There are three main criteria in light of which this is so:

    1E Under ideal conditions, the market system necessarily [achieves] [efficiency].
    2E Under a wide range of actual conditions, the market system [promotes] [efficiency].
    3E The value of [achieving/promoting][efficiency] provides a good rationale for the basic structure of the market system.

    Notice that these claims allow for two variables – x, specifying a value (above, E for efficiency), and y, specifying how the market system appropriately relates or responds to that value (above, through achieving or promoting it). I will argue that there is at least one value of x besides efficiency, and corresponding y-relation, for which 1xy-3xy are true and, thus, that there is at least one additional value that has an equally strong claim to being the point of the market system. This is the value, R, of relational equality. It is closely related to the kinds of freedom that others have argued justify the market system, but I will claim that relational equality better captures the point of the market system than these closely related forms of freedom. My conclusion implies that we need to significantly broaden our understanding of market failures. Real-world markets often, in addition to failing to be efficient, fail to achieve relational equality and, in doing so, fail on their own terms.

Session 10C: Corruption

• Gaming: The Logic Of Corruption
  • We examine the question of why corruption exists and what may explain its resilience in the face of efforts to eradicate it. We focus our analysis on the psychological antecedents of corrupt behavior and develop the hypothesis that an adaptive form of problem-solving behavior called gaming is at the heart of corruption. We show how the adoption of small unethical actions can evolve into organizational routines more rapidly and with less awareness than agents who engage in these behaviors expect. Over time, if left unchecked, the behaviors of gaming can become a de facto way of achieving goals. In settings in which the performance of the agent is embedded within a specific organization, this dependence on gaming can extend to organizational level performance. Under this analysis corruption emerges as an intentional behavior in which deception is used to cover up the prevalence and dependence on gaming as a means of achieving goals in organizational settings. Once intentionality is present and deception is deployed, corruption becomes institutionalized and self-sustaining. In what follows we address two questions: (1) what type of situation or problem prompts the behaviors of gaming? and (2) in the face of the prevalence of gaming, what strategies of thinking lead to the transition from gaming to corrupt acts as an acceptable or even preferred form of problem solution? We present a framework for the study of corruption based on our analysis of gaming and the unintended consequences it has in organizational settings.
• Values As Drivers For Fighting Corruption At SMEs In Global Business
  • Corruption is a massive global problem with negative consequences for society. The long dom-inant compliance approach focused on enforcing a set of formalized rules and procedures via monitoring and punishment has proven ineffective and inappropriate in an increasingly complex global anti-corruption field. This is particularly true for internationally operating small and me-dium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who remain often shielded from public scrutiny and are of re-sistant to (proactively) engage in anti-corruption. Drawing on recent insights on the performa-tive power of values to drive change in unethical contexts, we explore the dynamics of value-based approaches as an alternative to compliance-based approaches to integrate SMEs in the global anti-corruption field. In particular, we aim to explore whether values drive anti-corruption efforts at SMEs in global business, and if so, in what way and why. Our case study of SMEs in the global anti-corruption field reveals that in order to achieve a more proactive valuation of anti-corruption at SMEs in global business, two ideal types of value-based dynamics are crucial: An enabling dynamic and a coercion dynamic. By carving out three central mechanisms – perform-ing values practices (via moralizing vs discrediting), emotional attachment to values practices, collective action – that help explain these dynamics, our study demonstrates the powerful role of values and emotions to drive change in complex global corruption contexts.
• Enhancing Anti-Corruption Training Effectiveness – A Look At Emotional Drivers Of Corrupt Behaviour In Nigeria
  • Corruption metrics continue to worsen despite attempts to curb corrupt practices through anti-corruption training. The persistence of such negative practices has stifled growth in many countries, especially in developing economies. Specifically, in Nigeria, the corruption indices seem to be worsening in spite of numerous anti-corruption training efforts. This paper seeks to deepen the current understanding of the emotional factors that drive corrupt practices in an emerging economy, especially among those people who are knowledgeable about corruption and have received anti-corruption training. The research approach is an explanatory sequential one qualitative data. Our findings reveal six dominant emotional drivers of corruption. We provide various insightful strategies for improving the impact of anti-corruption training by incorporating the knowledge derived from our results into anti-corruption training curricula.

Session 10D: Agora

• The Trial Of Socrates: Dialogues
• Towards ESG Investments And Reporting In European Businesses? Is The EU Model Of Due Diligence A Model For A Global Ethical Economy?
• Creating A More Equitable Healthcare Environment Through Belonging
• We Rise To Resist: The Crisis Of Relevance And The Movement Against Generative AI In Creative Industries
• Humanism, Dehumanization, Integral Human Development: An Overview Of Boundaries And Capabilities Of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence In Business And Organizations

Session 10E: Panel 7

• The Erb Principles for Corporate Political Responsibility: Perspectives from Theory and Practice