Globalization under microscope in ethics center talk

KALAMAZOO—A DePaul University scholar will tackle the thorny issue of globalization and its impact when she speaks in February at Western Michigan University as part of the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society's spring season.

Dr. Patricia H. Werhane, the Wicklander Chair of Business Ethics and managing director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics at DePaul, will speak at 3 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14, in 1120 Schneider Hall. Her presentation, titled "Globalization and Its Discontents," is free and open to the public.

In her talk, Werhane will examine how, despite the economic growth that has spurred enormous economic improvements for those living in industrialized nations and reduced poverty worldwide, at least 20 percent of the world's population still lives in extreme poverty, with millions of people working in sweatshops, including at least 200 million children under age 14. Werhane contends it is not globalization, per se, that is the issue, but that other factors play a role.

Patricia H. Werhane

In addition to her duties at DePaul University, Werhane is also professor emerita at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, where she was the Peter and Adeline Ruffin Chair of Business Ethics and a senior fellow at the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics until 2009.

Werhane is a founding member and past president of the Society of Business Ethics, past president of the American Society for Value Inquiry and past president of the International Society of Business, Economics and Ethics. She has been a Rockefeller Fellow at Dartmouth, a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge and the Erskine Visiting Fellow at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. In 2008, she was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in business ethics by Ethisphere Magazine.

Werhane's presentation is co-sponsored by the Global Business Center and the Global Business Students Association in the Haworth College of Business and the Haenicke Institute for Global Education.