Can we be harmed after we die? Jimmy Savile vs. Lance Armstrong

In the last few weeks two news stories have been particularly prominent. The first concerns the revelations that erstwhile national treasure Jimmy Savile was actually a predatory paedophile who took advantage of his position as a prominent broadcaster and charity fundraiser to sexually abuse women and children, particularly the vulnerable.

The second concerns cycling legend and seven times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, who has finally been exposed as orchestrating  ”the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program” in sport.

The Purpose of Banks

I wrote this article with Antony Elliot, chief executive of the Fairbanking Foundation. It was published in the May edition of Financial World under the title ‘Business Angels’.

In February, Stephen Hester received positive comment in the Financial Times for his memo to RBS staff setting out his expectations of the organisation: “To be purposeful, calm, and do our jobs to the best of our ability.” This idea of ‘purpose’ has arisen more than once in recent commentary on the financial services sector. Pursuit of a valuable purpose could be viewed as a way of addressing prominent criticisms of the sector, such as that of undertaking ‘socially useless’ activity.

Talk on banking reform, York, April 3rd

Hugo Radice, who participated in the workshops on ethics in financial services that I organised last year at IDEA, will be giving a talk on banking reform in York on 3rd April.

Hugo is a Life Fellow in the School of Politics & International Studies at the University of Leeds. The details of his talk are below, and all are welcome:

Taming the banks: is the new regulatory framework fit for purpose?

Hugo Radice

Yorkshire Philosophical Society

7.30 pm, Tuesday 3rd April, Tempest Anderson Hall, York

(for details see http://www.yorksphilsoc.org.uk/)

Regulating Bankers

In September 2011 I wrote a post offering support to Ed Milliband’s idea of imposing a code of conduct on bankers, to be backed up with the threat of ‘striking off’ those that contravene the code. In a comment on that post I was challenged to justify this support, given the disanalogies between ‘bankers’, and doctors or lawyers. Having re-read my reply I thought some of the ideas there merited their own post, so here it is!

It is certainly true that the activity of banking is quite different from that of medicine or even law, in part this is because it is an activity undertaken by organisations rather than individuals; in part because the acceptance and management of risk (as opposed to its elimination) is a central part of banking activity.

E&T Magazine Article – Social Engineering

Here’s a link to an article that I was interviewed for. It is in E&T Magazine, the magazine of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, and looks at the increasing integration of ethics into engineering:

E&T Magazine – Social Engineering.

Corporate Social Responsibility

This post also appears on the IDEA CETL’s blog.

In writing a teaching unit on CSR recently, I was forced to try and articulate what has long bothered me about the idea, so I thought I would share my conclusions:

One common criticism that is levelled at academic approaches to business ethics is that they hold relatively little relevance to those people actually engaged in the practice of business. In recent years, however, one set of ideas that is identified in explicitly ethical language has gained significant traction in the business world – that which falls under the title of ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ or ‘CSR’.

Milliband’s call to discipline bankers

It is interesting to read this morning Ed Milliband’s call to impose a code of conduct on bankers, the breaking of which will lead to individuals being ‘struck off’ and unable to work in the industry. This call puts the emphasis on the idea of banking as a profession, on a par with doctors and lawyers, both of which face strict regulation from professional bodies that monitor and, where necessary discipline their members. The most severe form of discipline being the removal of permission to practice.