NYU Stern Announces Inaugural Paduano Fellows on Business Ethics

NYU Stern recently announced the names of the first four Fellows of the Daniel P. Paduano Faculty Symposium on Business Ethics. These Fellows, chosen both for their records of research excellence and for their potential to integrate ethical theories and issues into their scholarly ac-tivities, are professors Doug Guthrie and Batia Wiesenfeld from management, Foster Provost from information systems, and David Yermack from finance.

"I am thrilled with the first cohort of Paduano Fellows," said Bruce Buchanan, Director of Stern's Program in Markets, Ethics, and Law. "Doug, Batia, Foster, and David are all top re-searchers who have already made lasting contributions to their fields, so each of them brings a distinct expertise to the Symposium that will inform our research efforts. Moreover, they are all thought leaders within Stern who play critical roles in both our research and educational mis-sions. The ultimate goal of the Paduano Symposium is to build an interdisciplinary community of scholars at Stern focused on research in Business Ethics. The fact that these four exceptional faculty members have committed to be Fellows in the Symposium speaks to the importance of that goal to the school and to the centrality of business ethics in today's world."

As Paduano Fellows, the professors participate in regular seminars taught primarily by the lead-ing scholars in the field of business ethics. The seminars provide a forum for Stern faculty to ex-change ideas with leading researchers in business ethics and related fields. Over time, the Pa-duano Fellows will weave the issues and conceptual vocabulary explored in the seminar into their own research and scholarly efforts. To ensure a rich variety of perspectives in the seminar, invited participants include faculty from other NYU departments such as philosophy, psychol-ogy, and sociology, faculty from other universities in the New York area, and some select lead-ing practitioners.

At the first seminar session John Elster, the Robert Merton Professor of Social Sciences at Co-lumbia University, presented his ideas on local and transitional justice in the context of business and its globalization, with emphasis on different models and cognitive schema for describing just and unjust outcomes. Afterwards he led a lively discussion on how people's conceptions of jus-tice explain their behavior. At the second session on December 4, Robert Audi, the Robert E. Gallo Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Notre Dame, spoke on the role of virtue ethics, as derived from the ideas of Aristotle, to contemporary management.

About the Symposium
In concert with Stern's mission of knowledge creation and dissemination, and in recognition of business ethics as an important intersection of business and society, the Daniel P. Paduano Fac-ulty Symposium on Business Ethics was established in 2007 to build and sustain a vibrant com-munity of faculty across disciplines who conduct research in business ethics and related fields. This investment in fostering a scholarly community dedicated to business ethics is made possible through the generous support of Daniel P. Paduano (MBA '69).