APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1

Web Site Search

Robert L. Causey, Review Editor
The University of Texas at Austin
rlc@cs.utexas.edu
http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/philosophy/faculty/causey/

The On-Line Journal of Ethics at http://www.stthom.edu/cbes/oje.html is published by the Center for Business Ethics at the Cameron School of Business of the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Articles submitted to the journal are blind refereed. As well as I can determine, the web site does not provide much guidance about the types of articles appropriate for the journal. At the present time (July 1999), two volumes have been published, each divided into three numbers. Here are some representative titles: "The Ethics of Handwriting Analysis in Pre-Employment Screening," "Temporary Employment and the Social Contract," "Imperfect Competition, Price-Fairness, and the Pharmaceutical Industry," and "The Globalization of the Economy and the Value Orientation of Corporations in China." The latter was written by Prof. Xiaohe Lu of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, China. These titles indicate a practical orientation of the journal, as well as an international scope. However, the journal also contains an interesting historically oriented piece, "Cicero and the Ethics of Honest Business Dealings," by Randy Richards of St. Ambrose University. A few book reviews have also been published, for example, an interesting review of Alex Michalos, A Pragmatic Approach to Business Ethics (Sage, 1995), by Richard Hansen of the New York Life Insurance Company.

One of the articles promised to be of special interest to me: "Ethical Issues of Expert Systems," Volume 1, Number 1, by Jim Belohlav, David Drehmer, DePaul University, and Louis Raho, University of Louisville. Expert systems are a type of artificial intelligence program that include specialized knowledge of experts on some topic, together with reasoning capabilities. The latter usually include both logical and probabilistic reasoning. Expert systems have applications in which they, rather than human experts, are used to help solve practical problems. These problems can range from medical diagnosis to business decision making to the planning of course schedules to numerous other kinds of applications. Of course, if an expert system gives its user poor advice, resulting in harmful results, there may be some dispute regarding who is responsible. This and other ethical and legal issues are raised by real world applications of expert systems. Unfortunately, "Ethical Issues of Expert Systems" does not present detailed analysis of the most important ethical issues arising from the use of expert systems. Instead the article is largely devoted to a summary of the results of an opinion survey of "information system professionals" selected from the membership of the Data Processing Management Association. Moreover, the survey’s scope was quite narrow, yielding narrow results such as: individual experts should not be forced to contribute to the development of an expert system and they are not the owners of the system to which they contribute their expertise. This article is disappointing, but some of the other articles and reviews, e.g., "Cicero and the Ethics of Honest Business Dealings," in The On-Line Journal of Ethics are more rewarding.

Another e-journal concerned with business and professional ethics is the Electronic Journal of Business and Organizational Ethics (EJBO) at http://www.jyu.fi/ejbo/index.html This journal is published by the Business and Organization Network, School of Business and Economics, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Its aim is "to promote research and practice of business and organization ethics," and is intended for anyone interested in these topics from a "multidisciplinary point of view." The web page includes brief instructions for contributors, has facilities for contacting the editors and sending comments, and also contains an online discussion forum. At the present time Volume 4, Number 1, of EJBO is posted at the top of the site’s menu hierarchy. Previous articles are available online in the site’s "Archive" section. Here are some titles of articles that have been published in EJBO: "About the ethics of business competition," "What kind of morality is trust?" "Plato and Charisma," "A tentative tool for making morally better decisions in business—a Rossian approach." The last of these is a brief but interesting article that discusses the importance of prima facie duties in business ethics. The contents of the journal also contain one book review, of Laura Nash, Good Intentions Aside: A Manager’s Guide to Resolving Ethical Problems (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1993). The excellent review is by Anna-Maija Lämsä, whose affiliation is not given in the book review. Addresses of other authors are displayed as hypertext if one clicks on their names at the beginning of the articles. I mention this because I first looked for authors’ addresses at the ends of the articles, and did not find them there. Since Ms. Lämsä is co-author of another article, from it one learns that she is affiliated with the University of Jyväskylä.

In my judgment, the quality of the articles in both of these journals is mixed. Also, at this time most of the contributors are not philosophers. This is to be expected with interdisciplinary work, including applied ethics. I hope that philosophers working on professional ethics will contribute some papers to these journals. This would enhance the journals’ contents and help to make philosophical work available to a broad, and interested, audience.

Previously Noted E- Journals
(URLs checked in July, 1999)