Dr. Richard Robinson
A new book, “The Imperfect Duties of Management,” by Dr. Richard Robinson of the School of Business, was published in early September by Palgrave-Macmillan.
Dr. Robinson described the premise of the book: “In Kantian ethics, duties are separated into those that are absolute – termed perfect duties – from those that are volitional – termed imperfect duties. The former includes absolute prohibitions such as, ‘Do not commit fraud.’ The latter includes those actions we take in pursuit of some moral principle, but that include wide latitude in how we fulfill them, and that have practical limits and tradeoffs. For example, because of time and other resource constraints, ‘due diligence’ in management generally has practical limits and tradeoffs of one diligent effort for another. The same is true of managerial communications and efforts to build a moral business community. Whereas the previous economic view of a business establishment was that it consisted of a nexus of contracts – both explicit and implicit contracts all involving perfect duties – this book establishes that a business establishment is mostly a nexus of imperfect duties. This new view provides clarity as to how business relations develop, and how management can resolve certain fundamental business problems such as appropriate stakeholder relations, and those posed by managerial perquisite consumption. This view also opens the door (open wider than previously) to the virtue ethics approach to management.”
