Moral Issues in Business With Infotrac (Moral Issues in Business)

Rating:
Summary: Great reading, if you like socialist piffle
Review: I'm not surprised that someone with very little exposure to philosophical thought would find the arguments of this book convincing. The authors do a great job of employing misleading statistics and frequently resort to logical fallacies (petitio principii, mainly) in their arguments. This book is great if you want an anti-capitalist screed, but it fails miserably as an impartial analysis of business ethics. Like ssaber, I was disappointed to find a three page "defense" of capitalism and a ten page attack of it in Chapter 4, "The Nature of Capitalism." The authors include the views of a wide range of notable experts in this section, including but not limited to Karl Marx, George Soros, and Bertold Brecht (yeah, now there's a real authority on the subject). Why not include Sean Penn while you're at it, guys? I wasn't surprised to find that they'd skipped over real economists like Keynes, Hayek, and Friedman.

Rating:
Summary: Terribly boring
Review: It is my good fortune to be in a college program aimed at the adult learner. I had heard much about today's college atmosphere molding many of our young people into politically correct animals and was glad that type of teaching was not reaching me. Unfortunately it found me in a Business Ethics course which uses this book. Messrs Shaw and Barry, in a writing style that is very familiar to me, do a rather unethical job in an attempt to bring you around to their point of view. In the book they cite single sources with assurances that others must feel the same, use the famed, 'many have said' frame of mind, and introduce each chapter with one of societies ills, the entire purpose of which seems only to be to cast a negative light preparing the reader to dislike something that follows. In a specific example, a section on the natural right to property (p 146, 2nd paragraph) in a part of the chapter that is supposed to show the moral justifications of capitalism has a sentence that reads as follows: "Although we are no longer permitted to own other people, we are certainly free to own a variety of other things, from livestock to stock certificates, from our own home to a whole block of apartment buildings." I was so bothered by this one sentence that I had to put the book down for an hour. There were no statements on slavery in the beginning of the chapter and after looking there was nothing that would indicate a disclaimer about not being able to own people in the entire book. Yet here was a statement in a section that was supposed to show the morality of capitalism that gets shot down in the second sentence. If this were the only example of questionable writing in the book I would not have written this review. Another section that was supposed to define capitalism spent more that half the section discussing socialism. Much of this book seems to be designed to incite a person's emotions. As an adult learner it seems silly to me to attempt to coerce my viewpoint in such a manner. My open mind is better reached through logical discussion of facts and views rather than this unethical attempt to work at my underbelly. I'm insulted and disappointed by the attempt. What bothers me more is that other students not my age (33) are being influenced or coerced by material of this type in advanced learning institutions. I'm concerned that these are the types of texts and the professors that teach from them that drive children to throw tofu pies and yell 'shame on you' at officials just for eating meat.

Rating:
Summary: Politically Correcting our Colleges and Universities.
Review: It is my good fortune to be in a college program aimed at the adult learner. I had heard much about today's college atmosphere molding many of our young people into politically correct animals and was glad that type of teaching was not reaching me. Unfortunately it found me in a Business Ethics course which uses this book. Messrs Shaw and Barry, in a writing style that is very familiar to me, do a rather unethical job in an attempt to bring you around to their point of view. In the book they cite single sources with assurances that others must feel the same, use the famed, 'many have said' frame of mind, and introduce each chapter with one of societies ills, the entire purpose of which seems only to be to cast a negative light preparing the reader to dislike something that follows. In a specific example, a section on the natural right to property (p 146, 2nd paragraph) in a part of the chapter that is supposed to show the moral justifications of capitalism has a sentence that reads as follows: "Although we are no longer permitted to own other people, we are certainly free to own a variety of other things, from livestock to stock certificates, from our own home to a whole block of apartment buildings." I was so bothered by this one sentence that I had to put the book down for an hour. There were no statements on slavery in the beginning of the chapter and after looking there was nothing that would indicate a disclaimer about not being able to own people in the entire book. Yet here was a statement in a section that was supposed to show the morality of capitalism that gets shot down in the second sentence. If this were the only example of questionable writing in the book I would not have written this review. Another section that was supposed to define capitalism spent more that half the section discussing socialism. Much of this book seems to be designed to incite a person's emotions. As an adult learner it seems silly to me to attempt to coerce my viewpoint in such a manner. My open mind is better reached through logical discussion of facts and views rather than this unethical attempt to work at my underbelly. I'm insulted and disappointed by the attempt. What bothers me more is that other students not my age (33) are being influenced or coerced by material of this type in advanced learning institutions. I'm concerned that these are the types of texts and the professors that teach from them that drive children to throw tofu pies and yell 'shame on you' at officials just for eating meat.

Rating:
Summary: Terribly boring
Review: This is easily the most boring book I have ever had to read for a class. While the case studies are fairly interesting and thought-provoking, the actual instructional portions of the book are very dry and hard to read.

Rating:
Summary: As a response to comments by "ssaber"
Review: Well, I happen to disagree with previous comment. Not only did I like the course, I also liked the book. It wasn't an easy reading, I got to tell you. Sometimes it took more than one reading and several minutes or reflecting to figure out what the authors were talking about. But in the end it all made sense. And as a bonus the book went into great detail on philosophy, psychology, political science, and economics which I found quite helpful, since as a business major I didn't have a chance to take courses in first three subjects mentioned. The best thing, however, was, that almost a year later in packed Helsinki bar, I was able for about 15 minutes to talk about greatest German and French philosophers - all about them I learned from this book.