Jeffery Smith is Associate Professor of Business Ethics and Director of the Banta Center for Business, Ethics and Society at the University of Redlands. In that capacity he oversees the administration of curricular and co-curricular programming related to business ethics and corporate responsibility in the School of Business. In addition to work with organizations such as the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association (ECOA) and the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), Professor Smith has lectured at academic institutions such as the University of Colorado, University of Pennsylvania, Antwerp University and the Economic University of Bratislava on themes ranging from ethics management, the financial crisis and corporate social responsibility. In 2008 he served as Visiting Professor of Ethics at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. His current research focuses on the philosophical foundations of corporate social responsibility. Professor Smith received his Ph.D. in moral and political philosophy from the University of Minnesota in 2000.
ALS 341
BioIndustry Ethics & SocietyThis 15-week course, will cover a number of ethical and broader social issues related to bioindustry, with the goal of familiarizing students with up-to-date thinking on these issues.
Smith, J.D. "Corporate Social Purpose and the Task of Management," Corporations and Citizenship, ed., Greg Urban (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), forthcoming.
Smith, J.D. and G.W. Dubbink. "Understanding the Role of Moral Principles in Business Ethics: A Kantian Perspective," Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 21, no. 2 (2011): 205-231.
Dubbink, G.W. and J.D. Smith. "A Political Conception of Corporate Moral Responsibility," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Vol. 14, no. 2 (2011): 223-246.
Smith, J.D. "Moral Markets and Moral Managers Revisited," Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 61, no. 2 (2005): 129-141.
Smith, J.D. "Market Failures, Political Responses and Corporate Environmental Responsibility," Business and Professional Ethics Journal, Vol. 24, no. 2 (2005): 131-140.
My current research is focused on the philosophical foundations of corporate social responsibility. I think it has become too common to view corporate social responsibility as a purely strategic or instrumental endeavor and ethicists have been conspicuously absent from conversations about why, exactly, corporate social responsibilities are properly thought of as responsibilities. To that end, I think that the normative justification of CSR arises from the fact that corporations have been delegated tasks in modern societies that might otherwise be undertaken by public entities. The administration of these tasks (e.g., to improve national defense, promote public health, develop technologies to manage environmental quality, educate citizens, and finance public works) should be done in a legitimate fashion, which presumes that we view corporate managers as stewards of the public good, who have role-based responsibilities to investors, but who also have specific duties tied to the underlying purpose of the corporate form and the social goods that their particular firms aim to promote.
