The Business Ethics Blog

Today is the Business Ethics Blog’s 1-year Blogaversary. Yes, I posted my first entry on this date in 2005.

Over the next 5 days, I’ll be celebrating this Blogaversary here on-line. You’ll see:

• Retrospection;
• More retrospection;
• Contests;
• More contests (yes, there will be fabulous prizes to win! So visit often, & send your friends).

Blogs are intrinsically egocentric devices. My blog (just like most other blogs) is about what I want to say, on topics that I see fit to expound upon (note that – and several of you have written to complain about this – this blog doesn’t have a “Comment” feature. Sorry!) So, given that the BEB is sort of a diary of my thoughts on issues that I find interesting, inevitably if you’ve reading this Blog, you’ll have learned a bit about me (eek!) along the way to (hopefully) learning something about business ethics. So, what have y’all learned about me over the last year?

1) I dislike SUVs, and the companies that make them.
2) I think Wal-Mart is not so bad (mostly), and is the most intellectually stimulating company on the planet.
3) I think people who assume all corporations are evil, or that all corporations are saints, are themselves morons.
4) I think the pharmaceutical industry deserves serious criticism, but not always for the things they actually get criticized for.
5) I thought The Corporation (which lots of folks loved) was an awful, awful movie, and I thought The Smartest Guys in the Room (which most people haven’t seen) should have won the Academy Award it was nominated for. (Stupid penguins!)

OK, enough about me. On to contest #1. Here goes:
The prize goes to the reader who can answer this trivia question: what famous person did I facetiously claim (in a blog entry earlier this year) was sponsoring an ethics prize? Email me your answer. First correct answer wins the prize.
The prize is: a copy of John Roberts’ excellent book, The Modern Firm, courtesy of Oxford University Press Canada. The winner will also naturally gain the fame that goes with being publicly recognized on this blog. 🙂
[Update! The contest is over. The winner was Fahir Zulfikar, a Ph.D. student who lives in North Carolina. Congratulations Fahir, your book is on its way!]