Systems Thinking and Moral Imagination : Rethinking Business Ethics with Patricia Werhane

This volume brings together a selection of papers written by Patricia Werhane during the most recent quarter century. The book critically explicates the direction and development of Werhane’s thinking based on her erudite and eclectic sampling of orthodox philosophical theories. It starts out with an introductory chapter setting Werhane’s work in the context of the development of Business Ethics theory and practice, along with an illustrative time line. Next, it discusses possible interpretations of the papers that have been divided across a range of themes, and examines Werhane’s contribution to these thematic areas. 

Patricia H. Werhane is a renowned author and innovator at the intersection of philosophy and Applied Business Ethics. She is professor emerita and a senior fellow at the Olsson Centre for Applied Ethics at Darden and was formerly the Ruffin Professor of Business Ethics. She is also professor emerita at DePaul University, where she was Wicklander Chair in Business Ethics and director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics.  

A prolific author whose works include Moral Imagination and Management Decision-Making and Organization Ethics for Health Care, Werhane is an acclaimed authority on employee rights in the workplace, one of the leading scholars on Adam Smith and founder and former editor-in-chief of Business Ethics Quarterly, the leading journal of Business Ethics. She was a founding member and past president of the Society for Business Ethics and, in 2001, was elected to the executive committee of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. Before joining the Darden faculty in 1993, Werhane served on the faculty of Loyola University Chicago and was a Rockefeller Fellow at Dartmouth College and Senior Fellow at Cambridge University.

David Bevan has a PhD in Management for King’s College London (2007), he has serve the faculties of Royal Holloway University of London, HEC Paris, Université Libre de Bruxelles, and CEIBS in the fields of Applied Ethics and Strategy. Bevan writes and researches on Business Ethics, Leadership, Marketing, Economics as affected by Continental and Process Philosophy.  He has been a regular collaborator with Patricia Werhane since 2008. In addition to academic interests he consults with SMEs and large international firms on strategic leadership and environmental, social and governance risk management 

Regina Wentzel Wolfe, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Theological Ethics at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois. She is also a Senior Wicklander Fellow, Institute for Business and Professional Ethics at DePaul University. She was Christopher Chair in Business Ethics in the Brennan School of Business Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois. Prior to that, she was Associate Professor of Theology at Saint John's University Collegeville, Minnesota. Wolfe has worked in the fields of market research and economic research and forecasting and was on the editorial staff of The Tablet, based in London, England. She is co-editor of Ethics and World Religions: Cross-cultural Case Studies. She was editor of the Society for Business Ethics Newsletter and Executive Director of the Society of Christian Ethics. Wolfe holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from McDonough School of Business Georgetown University, a Master in Theology and Ministry from Loyola University Chicago, and a Ph.D. from King's College University of London.

Patricia H. Werhane is the Wicklander Chair of Business Ethics and Managing Director, Institute for Business and Professional Ethics at DePaul University and Professor Emerita at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia where she was the Peter and Adeline Ruffin Chair of Business Ethics and Senior Fellow at the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics.  Until 1993 she was the Henry J. Wirtenberger Professor of Business Ethics at Loyola University of Chicago.  She received her B.A. from Wellesley College, and M.A. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University

Professor Werhane is a founding member and past president of the Society of Business Ethics, past president of the American Society for Value Inquiry, and past president of the International Society for Business, Economics and Ethics.  She is also a member of the Academy of Management, the European Business Ethics Network, the American Philosophical Association, the International Society for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, and the Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs.  She has been a Rockefeller Fellow at Dartmouth, Andersen Professor at the University of Cambridge, and Erskine Visiting Fellow at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), Fulbright Specialist at All Hallows College Dublin Ireland and Visiting Scholar at Royal Holloway University of  London and St. Thomas University Minneapolis.

Professor Patricia Werhane is the author or editor of over twenty-five books including Ethical Issues in Business, edited with Tom Donaldson eighth edition, Persons, Rights, and Corporations, Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism, and Moral Imagination and Managerial Decision-Making, published by Oxford University Press.  Her work, Profitable Partnerships for Poverty Alleviation with Laura Hartman, Dennis Moberg and Scott Kelley, focuses on globalization, with an emphasis on developing new models for corporate governance and corporate initiatives to alleviate poverty both in the United States and in less developed countries around the world. Written with co-authors, Corporate Responsibility: An American Experience traces the historical foundations of corporate responsibility in the United States and won the SIM Academy of Management Book Award for 2014. Her latest book, with Hartman, Archer, Englehardt and Pritchard, is Obstacles of Ethical Decision-Making  published ate Cambridge University Press.

 She has written over 100 published articles, case studies, and book chapters on various business ethics on such topics as employee and employer rights, mergers and acquisitions, responsibilities of multinational corporations, intellectual property, and the intersection between healthcare organizations and business ethics.  Professor Werhane serves on the editorial boards of a number of journals and she is founder and former editor-in-chief of Business Ethics Quarterly, the journal of the Society for Business Ethics. She is also on the academic advisory committee in the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics. In 2008 she was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in business ethics by Ethisphere Magazine.