Our project explores how profitable commercial activity not only enriches oneself and others, but contributes to a meaningful and well-lived life. We want to marry philosophy’s study of meaning and business schools’ study of commerce by exploring the parallels between the imperative individuals feel to fill their lives with purpose and the imperative of a business to know what its business is.
We will launch a new postdoctoral doctorate at the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University to train a new generation of uniquely philosophically-minded business ethicists. Additionally, we will organize workshops and publish research that examines the harmony between a business’s need for a mission and an individual’s need for meaning.
We aim to give our post docs a new perspective on how to teach the ethical, economic, and entrepreneurial lessons that we consider to be at the heart of a realistic business ethics. We will incorporate experimental and experiential learning projects into business education at WVU, projects that ask students to create value for themselves and others, reflect on their career ambitions, confront moral dilemmas, and learn something about the promise and pitfalls of cooperation in the real world. We will integrate these lessons into the education of every student at the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at WVU by reinventing our Business Ethics course, which reaches 700 students each year. We will draw on the Purpose Project, a pedagogical approach developed by Jessica Flanigan at the University of Richmond, and the Ethics Project, a pedagogical approach developed by Jason Brennan at Georgetown University, as well as the experimental and pedagogical work of Charlie Holt, Vernon Smith and Schmidtz and Johnson themselves.
