This is Jan Tullberg’s website, containing work in Ethics linked to Economics and Political Science.
E-mail: jan@tullberg.org
Stockholm Sweden Phone: +46-(0) 76 392 30 30
Affiliation
My PhD is in management at Stockholm School of Economics 2002. I became an Associate Professor and was a member of the Center for Ethics and Economics until the center was disbanded in 2006. I am now a research affiliate at The Centre for the Study of Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University.
A short introduction to my ideas and the texts.
My work is focused on the ethical norms to guide cooperation and conflict. They can be divided into three themes.
1 The Darwinian perspective.
In my opinion the Darwinian insight implies revisions in the view of man, his norms and his behavior. I wrote a book called “Natural Ethics” together with my wife Birgitta Tullberg who is a professor of Biology at Stockholm University. The link to her homepage is http://www.zoologi.su.se/research/tullberg.
A book chapter in an edited book A_Model serves as a good introduction to our book that has both a Swedish and an English version (see “Books”). Several articles further develop a critique of idealism as well as suggest more adaptive norms for human behavior. The project is to challenge the semi-religious ideas dominating in ethics with a secularization project in the enlightenment spirit.
2 Business ethics
Another theme is developing business ethics to a more sincere activity. There is a strong influence for self-sacrificing and inclusive rhetoric linked to marketing. Hypocrisy is a problem that not only consists of not “walking the talk”, but also in thoughtless talking. Sustainability and evidence-based change are worthy objectives, but there are limited efforts to develop ethics up to such standards. Since business ethics has become an academic field with special journals, I show my articles separately under the “Business Ethics” heading. My doctoral thesis is to be found under the heading “Books”.
3 Collective action
The potential and the risks with group action is something I have written extensively about. One topic focuses within-state ethnic conflicts and the issue of separatism CivDiv.PLS. Another is the rationality of nationalism. How rational is it for the individual to join a group project? Is there any group gain, or just intra-group transfers from losers to winners (with a commission for the leadership)? Conflict and cooperation can be hard to solve at an individual level and often even more so at a group level. This discussion ranges from theoretical issues such as group selection NewPD to the rationality of Sweden being a nation state EkPatriotism.