Normative Business Ethics Workshop Series of the Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research

The Workshop

Over the 2021-2022 academic year, the Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, will convene a regular works-in-progress series for scholars working in normative business ethics (NBE). In particular, the Series will workshop papers pursuing business ethics issues from a normative perspective, or papers in moral or political philosophy with implications for the market, distributive justice, labor relations, the role of business in society, etc.

Workshop Objectives

The Series is part of an effort to foster normative business ethics in the academy and the public sphere. This particular initiative has two key objectives: First, it endeavors to provide a regular forum for scholars working on business ethics from a normative perspective. The community of such scholars is relatively small, and dispersed across numerous institutions, and there are few opportunities for these individuals to convene and share work. This Series is an effort to connect these scholars and to enrich their shared intellectual life. Second, the Series aims to be especially valuable to junior faculty and advanced graduate students, by providing them with feedback from, and opportunities to interact with, more established members of the normative business ethics community. To that end, we hope to have (at least) one junior author and one senior author at each session.

Workshop Format

The workshop will meet roughly once each month over the academic year. Any academic or practitioner with an interest in normative business ethics is invited to attend the sessions. Attendees are expected to read the papers in advance, and to come with feedback for the paper authors. To maximize the opportunity for paper improvement, authors will not present their papers; we will instead spend our time together on questions and comments for the author.

Sessions will be held on Fridays, beginning at 1:00 pm unless otherwise indicated. We will discuss two to three papers at each session. Attendees are expected to read the papers in advance, and to come prepared to offer feedback.

Covid-19 Planning: Our current plan is to hold our October 2021 session, and possibly one other session, over Zoom, and to hold all other sessions in-person. We allow, however, that continued travel restrictions or a worsening of the pandemic might necessitate that we shift additional sessions to Zoom.

Our planned session dates are:

Zoom session: October 15

Planned in-person sessions:

November 19

December 10

February 11

March 25

May 6

Call for Abstracts

We invite abstract submissions from faculty and post-docs, and from graduate students who have advanced to the ABD stage. Preferential treatment will be given to those who have not presented work at the Series before, and we especially welcome submissions from women and under-represented minorities.

The abstract should propose a paper in normative business ethics, as described above. We ask that submissions offer a fairly detailed sense of the paper without exceeding 500 words.

We ask that applicants identify three of the above dates, in order of preference, at which they would like to present their work. Please also indicate if you have a preference for presenting over Zoom. (Again, we are committed to holding the session on October 15 over Zoom; we might hold one or more additional sessions over Zoom if enough presenters request it, or if circumstances require it.)

Please send your abstract to Brian Berkey – [email protected] -- by August 1st, 2021. Individuals will be notified about whether their paper has been selected for presentation by August 15, 2021.

Information for selected authors

The Zicklin Center is pleased to offer travel funding for paper authors for the session at which their paper will be discussed, should that session be held in person. Reimbursement for travel expenses is subject to two conditions. By accepting the offer to workshop a paper, the paper author pledges that:

1.     The paper they will share is at a stage of development where the author can incorporate feedback gained at the workshop (e.g., the paper is not yet in page proofs or in print); and

2.     The paper author will send their draft paper to the organizers no fewer than 14 days before their presentation date.

For co-authored papers, we can ordinarily only provide travel funding for one of the authors, though other co-authors are welcome to attend.

Please address any questions about the CFA or the workshop to one of the organizers: Brian Berkey ([email protected]), Rob Hughes ([email protected]), or Julian Jonker ([email protected]).