Saturday, November 24, 2007

I emailed with various prefatory material

In some cases I emailed Does the Law Undermine Business Ethics? without any prefatory explanation.

In other cases, I cast my emailing of Does the Law Undermine Business Ethics? in the form of a survey project I was attempting and prefaced it with:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am surveying corporate ethics officers on the question posed below of whether the law undermines business ethics, such survey being in the form of an email to such officers as set out below.

Would the ______ Center for the Study of Media Ethics & Law be in a position to sponsor and/or publish my research?

Thank you.

Sincerely,


I also used:

Dear Professor _____________,

I am writing you this email because of your Scholar or Associate status at the __________ Center for Applied Ethics and your other standing in the field of ethics.

I am surveying corporate ethics officers on the question posed below of whether the law undermines business ethics, my survey being in the form of the email set out below.

This project is slow going for me. Among other things, I don't have ready access to email addresses for corporate ethics officers, and my email is going out in a very inefficient fashion. Also, I am having difficulty eliciting any interest or support of an organization or publication having a presence in the business ethics field, such as the Ethics and Compliance Officers Association.

I am trying to find if other persons have investigated or written about my research question of whether the law undermines business ethics. As yet I have not found anything.

I don't know if the reason for the foregoing situation is because the question I pose has such an obvious "yes" answer that no one is bothered to spend any time delving into it, or further whether such a yes answer simply reveals an elephant sitting in the middle of the room that no one wants to talk about.

Please tell me, if you would take the time: Is my research project a worthwhile area for inquiry? If you think it is worthwhile, could you give me a reference or introduction to an organization or publication that I might work with in pursuing my project? Do you have any other suggestions that might help me out?

Thank you.

Sincerely,

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