The Carleton Centre for Community Innovation was saddened to learn of the death of Dr. Wes Cragg of York University. Dr. Cragg collaborated with several of our Senior Researchers, and his valuable contributions to their collective work will be missed.
We have reprinted the notice we received from York University.
Dear Members of the Schulich Community,
On Saturday morning, the Schulich School of Business lost one of its esteemed faculty members. It is with sadness that I share with you news of the passing of our colleague and friend, Dr. Arthur Wesley (Wes) Cragg, Professor Emeritus of Policy and Business Ethics and Senior Scholar.
Dr. Cragg served as a cross-appointed member of the Schulich School’s faculty and York University’s Department of Philosophy since 1992, and he was appointed as the inaugural George R. Gardiner Professor in Business Ethics in 1992, a position he held until 2006. I had invited Wes to join York University in 1992 to develop a business ethics component for the MBA program at the Schulich School of Business, then known as the Faculty of Administrative Studies. Dr. Cragg’s work was pioneering at a time when business schools had historically embraced shareholder primacy and a purely economic view of the firm. The introduction of ethical considerations was initially met with substantial resistance, but he persevered, establishing himself as one of the world’s leading authorities in the field of business ethics.
From 1992 to 2009, Professor Cragg led the George R. Gardiner Program in Business Ethics as Program Director. He was also Project Director and Principal Investigator for the Canadian Business Ethics Research Network (CBERN), headquartered at the Schulich School of Business. Funded by the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council and other donors, CBERN’s goal is to encourage, support and raise the profile of business ethics research in Canada by facilitating networking and dialogue of individuals working across the private sector, government, NGOs and academia. Professor Cragg was also a senior fellow of the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS) at York. He became the founding Chair and President of the Canadian Chapter of Transparency International in 1996.
Wesley Cragg is a graduate of the Universities of Alberta and Oxford and an Alberta Rhodes Scholar. Prior to joining the Schulich School, Dr. Cragg was a Professor of Philosophy at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario.
Dr. Cragg has published more than 75 articles in Canadian and international journals, and has written or edited fourteen books, including Business and Human Rights; Corporate Social Responsibility; Contemporary Moral Issues; The Practice of Punishment: Towards a Theory of Restorative Justice; and Ethics Codes, Corporations, and the Challenge of Globalization. His scholarly work has covered a variety of themes including corporate governance, corporate codes of ethics, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, environmental ethics, business and human rights, ethical investment, the ethics of extractive industries, and economic development affecting First Nations communities. He served on the editorial boards of several Canadian and international academic journals; The Journal of Business Ethics; Business Quarterly; and Interchange.
He has worked extensively with Natural Resources Canada, DFAIT, CIDA, a number of other federal government departments, and Export Development Canada. Mining and nuclear waste disposal issues have dominated his work as a private sector consultant and advisor.
He was a past president of the Canadian Philosophical Society and the John Howard Society of Canada, as well as a member of the choir of the Trinity Anglican Church in Aurora.
Professor Cragg lived his values and inspired students to follow his example. In recent years, when he spoke on ethics to the MGMT5150 class, he advised them: “Your values are your personal spotlight. They determine what you see and don’t see.”
Memorial services have been set for Saturday, September 9th. Please see the link below for additional information regarding the services. Wes will be remembered as one of our School’s prominent faculty members.
On behalf of the many friends he had within the Schulich community, I offer our deepest sympathies to Wesley’s wife, Mary, his family, and his friends.
Sincerely,
Dezsö J. Horváth, PhD, CM
Dean
Tanna H. Schulich Chair in Strategic Management
Schulich School of Business
York University
Link to the Thompson Funeral Home website: http://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignity-memorial/obituary.aspx?n=Arthur-Cragg&lc=3162&pid=186513383&mid=7539098
In Memory of
Arthur Wesley Cragg
January 18, 1941 – August 26, 2017
Memorial Service
Saturday, September 09, 2017 | 10:30 am
Trinity Anglican Church
79 Victoria Street, Aurora, Ontario
Memorial Donations
The John Howard Society of Canada
Arrangements under the direction of Thompson Funeral Home, Aurora, ON.