Project USA: American competitiveness and what must be done to restore it

The United States today faces a loss of influence as a world power, a reduction in American independence as a policymaker, and a decline in the standard of living on which Americans have come to depend. History teaches that nations weaker and less productive than the United States can rise to become economic powerhouses and rapidly increase their standards of living. History also teaches that nations failing to recognize their fundamental problems will inevitably decline. American politicians must face what is abundantly clear: the United States is losing ground and must act quickly to reverse its course. This White Paper outlines what must be done. Information about the nation's current status must be analyzed and communicated. Incentives to improve the level of competence in government must be provided and maintained. The emphasis of government policy must be changed to reflect broad economic and technological interests as opposed to special interests. Savings must be encouraged and increased. Infrastructure must be improved Tax laws must be modified to help bring these changes about. Economic and technological issues must be elevated to the importance they require. American thinking must reflect the new realities: that the age of leadership through military power is over, that the requirements for success in the world of the 1990s and beyond require a sound and growing economy that is internationally competitive. The US can accomplish these goals only through foundation-shaking, comprehensive, fundamental changealong the lines we propose herein.This paper is the executive summary (with minor editing modifications) of a white paper that is available from Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management.     

Situational variation in moral judgment: In a stage or on a stage?

Two issues were examined in this study—the consistency of moral judgment across different types of dilemma and different social contexts, and the relationship between the structure (stage) of moral judgment and the content of moral decisions. Forty subjects were given two hypothetical dilemmas about business decisions and two standard Kohlberg dilemmas. Half the subjects directed their responses to a business audience, half to a philosophical audience. Responses to the moral dilemmas were scored in accordance with the Colby and Kohlberg (1987) scoring manual. Stage of moral reasoning was found to be significantly higher on the Kohlberg dilemmas than on the business dilemmas. A significant interaction between type of dilemma and audience was attributed to the tendency of subjects directing their responses to a business audience to interpret one of the business dilemmas in terms of the moral order of business, but for subjects directing their responses to a philosophy audience to treat it as a philosophical dilemma. The other business dilemma evoked uniformly low-level moral judgments. The amount of selfishness intrinsic in subjects' moral choices on the business dilemmas was significantly negatively correlated with moral maturity on the business dilemmas, but not with their moral maturity on Kohlberg's test. These results are interpreted as more consistent with models of moral development such as those advanced by C. G. Levine ([1979] Stage Acquisition and Stage Use: An Appraisal of Stage Displacement Explanations of Variation in Moral Reasoning, Human Development, Vol. 22, pp. 145–164), J. Rest ([1983] Morality, in: P. H. Mussen [ed.], J. H. Flavell and E. Markman [Vol. eds.], Handbook of Child Psychology [Vol. 3, 4th ed.], John Wiley & Sons, New York), and R. Harré ([1984]) Personal Being: A Theory for Individual Psychology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts), which posit a relatively wide range of within-person stage use and emphasize the determining power of social situations, than with the more constructivistic model of moral development of Colby and Kohlberg (1987).This research was supported by Grant No. 410-87-1115 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.Received B.A. and M.A from Simon Fraser University. Research interests include moral development, and the influence of social interaction and language on the development of reasoning.Received Ph.D. from Harvard University. Research interests include moral development, altruism, and self-deception.     

Reviews

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