How Good Policies and Business Ethics Enhance Good Quality of Life, 1st ed. 2017
The Selected Works of Alex C. Michalos

This volume provides bridges from the social sciences to business ethics and from the latter to the quality of life, by connecting the research themes of quality of life, social sciences, including public policy-making, and business ethics or corporate responsibility. It builds on the premise that public policy making is essentially a species of good decision making, as explained in the first volume. It shows that, because most developed countries function as market economies whose governments depend on taxation to pay for their services and because a large proportion of government revenue comes from well-regulated, responsible corporations, the quality of people?s lives is highly dependent upon good public policies, taxation and business ethics. The volume presents and examines ethical/moral problems arising in market economies since the first century BCE, including the first appearance of the business case for business ethics, fourteen arguments concerning the neglect of business ethics, business ethics issues for the 1990s and beyond, the loyal agent?s argument, advertising, the importance of trust, public opinion polling, public program evaluation, and a critique of the relatively new monster of super-capitalism. In addition, it deals with connections among the concepts of efficiency, morality, and rationality related to decision making in general and public policy making in particular. Finally, it explains relationships between outcomes measurement and performance indicators in general and performance-based management in public administration, the taxation of net wealth and financial transactions.

Chapter 1. Social Sciences and Business Ethics.- Chapter 2. Business Ethics and the Quality of Life.- Chapter 3. The Costs of Decision Making.- Chapter 4. Efficiency and Mortality.- Chapter 5. Rationality between the Maximizers and the Satisficers.- Chapter 6. The Loyal Agent's Argument.- Chapter 7. Moral Responsibility in Business.- Chapter 8. A Case for a Progressive Annual Net Wealth Tax.- Chapter 9. Militarism and the Quality of Life.- Chapter 10. The Impact of Trust on Business, International Security and the Quality of Life.- Chapter 11. Ethical Considerations Regarding Public Opinion Polling During Election Campaigns.- Chapter 12. Brief to the Ontario Cabinet Committee on North American Free Trade.- Chapter 13. Issues for Business Ethics in the Nineties and Beyond.- Chapter 14. Observation on Performance Indicators and Performance-Based Management in Public Administration.- Chapter 15. The Integration of Public Policy-Making with Outcomes Measurement.- Chapter 16. A Handful of Sand in the Wheels of Financial Speculation.- Chapter 17. Ethics counselors as a New Priesthood.- Chapter 18. Observations on the Proposed BC - STV Voting System.- Chapter 19. Ancient Observations on Business Ethics.- Chapter 20. The Monster of Supercapitalism.- Chapter 21. The Business Case for Asserting the Business Case for Business Ethics.- Chapter 22. Public Policy Letters ti Editors 1989-2001.

Prof. Alex Michalos currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Brandon University. He is also the Director of Research for the Canadian Index of Wellbeing and Emeritus Professor in Political Science at his former institution, the University of Northern British Columbia. Michalos has published 24 books, over 100 refereed articles, and founded or co-founded seven scholarly journals. Among the seven, he is Editor in Chief for the Journal of Business Ethics, the most frequently cited journal in the world devoted to business ethics, and Social Indicators Research, the first scholarly journal devoted to quality of life research. He is married to Dr. Deborah Poff, President and Vice-Chancellor of Brandon University.