Jewish Business Ethics Nejs 157A Spring 2014

JEWISH BUSINESS ETHICS – NEJS 157A – SPRING 2014

Instructor: Yehudah Mirsky

Office Hours, Wed 12-1, or by appointment, Mandel 318

The educational point of the curriculum is understanding...the historical moment in which we live, in which others have lived, and in which our descendants will someday live. It is understanding that informs the ethical obligation to care for ourselves and our fellow human beings, that enables us to think and act with intelligence, sensitivity, and courage...

William F. Pinar, “'Possibly Being So': Curriculum as Complicated Conversation,” in Idem, What is Curriculum Theory? (Mahwah/London: Erlbaum, 2004), pp. 185-21, 187

Our job is not to make up anyone's mind, but to open minds -- to make the agony of decision-making so intense that you can escape only by thinking.

Fred W. Friendly, former President CBS News

The objective of this course is twofold: to sensitize us to some of the key moral questions and dilemmas arising out of contemporary economic life; and to explore whether and how Jewish texts and traditions offer resources for thinking these questions through and acting on those reflections. Students will be encouraged to think critically and constructively about business and Judaic sources alike. Running through the course will be another question – how can a system of law and ethics originating long ago and far away speak in the present?

Previous background in business and economic and/or Jewish texts and tradition is helpful but not essential.

The heart of the course will be lectures based on the readings, and active discussion of moral dilemmas. An introductory unit on moral theory, general and Jewish, will then be followed by units on Responsibility to Employees, to Customers, to Investors, and to Society. In each of those units we will zero in on specific issues that illuminate the larger whole. The course’s final unit will engage with globalization, the moral foundations of the market place, and the meaning of human dignity.

The course will include two set-piece classroom debates, in which the class will be divided into teams and argue ethical questions, public and private in light of Jewish sources. With two debates, and two sides to each, every student will have an opportunity to participate in one. I will distribute and discuss source materials beforehand, with the class as a whole and students as individuals.

The grade will be determined as follows:

40% classroom participation (25% through the semester, 15% participation in classroom debates on April 7 and 9); please note that a number of meetings during the semester will not be lectures but

1 discussion of case studies. For all these reasons, attendance and classroom participation are essential as is doing the readings. Please post a few lines of comment and at least one question about the readings on the class' Latte Forum at the latest by midnight of the day before class. If several readings have been assigned for that day, you may comment on one or all of them, but I want to see something meaningful. I won't be grading these brief comment papers, but your doing them will count as part of your classroom participation grade, and I will be checking them. I understand that you may not be able to do this for every one of our meetings, but expect that you will for at least fifteen of them.

In addition I would like each of you to come and meet me one-and-one in the course of the semester, and preferably before the midterm. This will give me a better sense of your interests and concerns, and improve the quality of our shared study and discussion.

20% midterm reflection essay (800-1000 words); the reading on which this essay is to be based will be distributed on March 10 and due back by midnight on March 24.

40% take-home final exam (2000 words). The exam will be distributed in class at our last meeting, and will be due in by midnight on May 8.

Required Texts:

Joseph Badaracco, Jr., Defining Moments: When Managers must Choose between Right and Right (Harvard Business School Press, 1997)

Aaron Levine & Moses Pava, eds. Jewish Business Ethics: The Firm and its Stakeholders (Northvale/Jerusalem: Jason Aronson, 1999) [hereinafter JBE]

Most of the course materials - xeroxed articles etc - will be up on Latte. There will also be a course pack of materials developed by Harvard Business School.

Recommended Texts:

Raymond Scheindlin, A Short History of the Jewish People: From Legendary Times to Modern Statehood (New York: Oxford, 2000) Norman Solomon, Judaism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)

PLEASE TAKE NOTE: Some of the assigned readings and materials, as well as the arrangements of classroom debates may be subject to change in the course of the semester, in response to students’ interests and the flow of our discussion and learning.

OPENING MEETING

January 13

Introductory discussion

2 INTRODUCTORY UNIT OVERVEW OF ETHICAL THEORIES, GENERAL AND JEWISH

January 15 – What do we talk about when we talk about business ethics?

Daniel Terris, Ethics at Work: Creating Virtue at an American Corporation (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2006) pp. 18-48

Badaracco, chapters 1-4

January 22 – Thinking things through

Badaracco, Chapters 5-9

Babylonian Talmud (hereinafter BT), Tractate Sanhedrin 5b-7 and commentaries, on Latte (discussion of the benefits and downsides of legal and moral compromise) Richard T. DeGeorge,”A History of Business Ethics,” http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/business/conference/presentations/business-ethics- history.html (13 printed pages)

Deepak La, “Private Morality and Capitalism: Learning from the Past,” in John H. Dunning, ed. Making Globalization Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 41-60

January 27 -- What is Jewish Ethics?

Elliott Dorff & Jonathan Crane, “Why Study Jewish Ethics,” in Idem. Eds. The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 1 - 24

Louis I. Newman, "Ethics as Law, Law as Religion," Shofar 9:1 (1990), pp. 13-31

Moses Pava, “The Method of Jewish Business Ethics: Interpretation,” in Idem., Business Ethics: A Jewish Perspective (New York: Ktav/Yeshiva University Press, 1997), pp. 113-138

Moses Pava, “Moral Markets: Two Cheers for Stakeholder Theory” in JBE, pp. 1-26

January 29 - Classic Jewish Texts and their Historical Contexts

Hayim Lapin, “Economy and Society,” in M. Goodman and P. Alexander, eds. Rabbinic Texts and the History of Late Roman Palestine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 389-402

Isaiah M. Gafni, “The Political, Social and Economic History of the Jews of Babylonia, 224-638 BCE,” in Cambridge History of Judaism, volume 4, pp. 792-820

Edward Fram, “Social Issues as Halakhic Determinants,” in Ideals Face Reality: Jewish Law and Life in Poland, 1550-1655 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997), pp. 67-76

UNIT ONE - RESPONSIBILITES TO EMPLOYEES – DOWNSIZING AND THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE

3 February 3 - What is an employee and what are his/her rights and obligations?

Xeroxed Sources on Rabbinic Labor Laws (Biblical, Mishnaic, Talmudic), 5 pp.

David J. Schnall, “The Employee as Corporate Stakeholder,” in JBE, pp. 45-73

Robert Carver, “If the River Stopped: A Talmudic Perspective on Downsizing,” Journal of Business Ethics 50:2 (March, 2004), pp. 137-147

February 5 -- Classroom discussion of a case study

HBS Paper on Layoffs and Stakeholders

Aaron Levine, “Layoffs at Rechev,” from Idem., Case Studies in Jewish Business Ethics (New York: Ktav/Yeshiva University Press), chapter 5, pp. 249-265

Februrary 10 – Severance Pay: A Case Study of Jewish Law Interacting with US Customary Law

Michael Broyde, “Severance Pay and Jewish Law,” Tradition 37: 4 (2003), pp. 89-100

February 12: Jewish Ethics and Public Policy : Labor Unions and Employee Free Choice

Dani Rapp, “The Employee Free Choice Act, Unions and Unionizing in Jewish Law,” in Aaron Levine, ed, Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 429-444

Jill Jacobs, "Work, Workers and the Jewish Owner," Responsum for Rabbinical Assembly (Conservative Movement), 2006 (typescript, 58 pp. , double spaced) http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/20052010/jacobs- living-wage.pdf

CCAR Reponsa, “The Synagogue and Organized Labor,” 2001, http://ccarnet.org/responsa/nyp-no-5761- 4/ (8 pp. single spaced)

UNIT TWO -- RESPONSIBILITES TO CUSTOMERS AND CONSUMERS- ADVERTISING AND MARKETING

February 24 – Advertising and Marketing: Basic Ethical Questions

George Saunders, "In Persuasion Nation," Harper's November 2005

N. Craig Smith and Elizabeth Cooper-Martin, “Ethics and Target Marketing: The Role of Product Harm and Consumer Vulnerability” Journal of Marketing 61 (July 1997), pp. 1-20

Arthur Applbaum, “Rules of the Game and Fair Play” in Idem. Ethics for Adversaries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 113-135

February 26 – Marketing and Jewish Ethics: Basic Questions

Jonas Prager, “Balancing the Scales: Halakha, the Firm and Information Asymmetries, in JBE, pp. 123-146

4 Levine, “Protecting the Reasonable Man against Deception in Advertising,” in Idem, Case Studies in Jewish Business Ethics (New York: Ktav/Yeshiva University Press, 2000), pp. 33-49

March 3 – Marketing, Pricing and Protecting Consumer Privacy

Aaron Levine, “Aspects of the Firms’ Responsibility to its Customers: Pharmaceutical Pricing and Consumer Privacy” in JBE, pp. 75-121

March 5 – Classroom Case Study Exercise

Abhijit Roy & Satya P. Chattopadhyay, “Stealth Marketing,” Business Horizons, Jan. 25, 2010, 11 pp.

UNIT THREE - THE FIRM AND ITS RESPONSIBILIES TO INVESTORS AND THE PUBLIC

March 10 – The Meaning of Corporate Personhood

Daniel J.H. Greenwood, “Introduction to the Metaphors of Corporate Law,” University of Utah, Legal Studies Research Paper Series (2005)

HBS Paper on Fiduciary Duty

March 12 – Corporate Personhood in Jewish Law

Michael J. Broyde and Steven Resnicoff, “The Corporate Veil: A Still-Shrouded Concept,” in JBE, pp. 203- 272

March 17 – Classroom Exercise: Conflicting Moral Duties

Broyde and Resnicoff’s article discussed in the previous session lays out several different paradigms for understanding the corporation in Jewish law: As a free standing entity, a partnership, as a creditor, purchaser of entitlements, or as a network of relationships. We will examine different scenarios in which the moral duties of employees, shareholders and management conflict and how they might play out under each of those paradigms.

March 19 – Business and Social Responsibility

Symposium, Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business, http://reason.com/archives/2005/10/01/rethinking-the-social-responsi/print

Aaron Levine, “The Global Recession of 2007-2009: The Moral Factor and Jewish Law,” in Idem, Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp . 404-428

Walter Wurzburger, “Covenantal Morality in Business,” in JBE, pp. 27-43

March 24 – Ethical Investing Practices

D.B. Bressler, “Ethical Investment: The Responsibility of Ownership in Jewish Law,” in JBE, pp. 175-201

5 Asher Meir, “Principles of Ethical and Communal Investment in Judaism: A Jewish Law Approach,” in Aaron Levine, ed, Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 269-294

Jumpstart Labs/JLens Network, Report on Impact Investing: Rabbinic Perspectives (Summer 2013)

March 26 – Case Studies in Corporate Responsibility

James Austin, Herman B. Leonard, James W. Quinn, Timberland: Commerce and Justice, Harvard Business School Case Study, December 21, 2004, 24 pp.

Nitin Nohria, Thomas R. Piper, Bridget Gurtler, Malden Mills, Harvard Business School Case Study, December 10, 2003, 16 pp.

April 2 – Special Session: Film Screening and Discussion

This class will meet in the evening over dinner. We will see the movie, “Margin Call,” a dramatization based on events leading to the 2008 crash. It is an exceptionally intelligent film, which draws nearly all its characters in thought-provoking shades of gray.

April 7 – Classroom Debate 1: Does Judaism Mandate a Legislated Minimum Wage?

April 9 – Classroom Debate 2: Is Whistleblowing a Moral Duty?

UNIT FOUR - GLOBALIZATION AND THE MORAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE MARKETPLACE

As the course nears its close we will explore some of the ethical challenges arising from globalization, and the responsibilities of states, their business communities and individual citizens for one another, and vice versa. And we will, finally, in light of all we have discussed until now, undertake sustained reflection on the moral underpinnings of our economic institutions.

April 23 – Globalization: Promise and Peril

Michael Sandel, What Money Can't Buy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), "Introduction: Markets and Morals" pp. 3-15

Peter L. Berger, “The Cultural Dynamics of Globalization,” in Berger and Huntington, eds. Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World pp. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 1-16

Jonathan Sacks, “Global Covenant: A Jewish Perspective on Globalization”, in John H. Dunning, ed. Making Globalization Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 210-231

Case study – pharmaceutical patents in India and developing countries -- “India’s Patent Case Victory Rattles Big Pharma” The Lancet, April 13, 2013

April 28 – Capitalism and Judaism

6 Jonas Prager, “’Know Before Whom You Stand: Trust, the Marketplace and Judaism” in Aaron Levine, ed, Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 307-323

Meir Tamari, “Jewish Ethics, the State and Economic Freedom” in Aaron Levine, ed. Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 468-476

Jerry Z. Muller, Capitalism and the Jews (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), Introduction, chapters 2, 4, pp. 1-14, 72-132, 189-218

Aryeh Fishman, Judaism and Modernization on the Religious Kibbutz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1992) Intro, Chapter 6, pp. 1-6, 101-114