Justin Nordin, Ph.D.
Clinical Assistant Professor of Management, College of Business Administration Loyola Marymount University
- Los Angeles CA
Biography
Justin's primary research explores the intersection of phenomenology and normative ethics. His current work focuses on the ethical significance of "otherness" and dependency, specifically with regard to the work of Emmanuel Levinas and feminist Care Ethics. Justin has also designed and implemented educational programs for pre-college students in Chicago.
Justin earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Loyola University Chicago, an M.A. in Philosophy from Loyola Marymount University, and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the Pennsylvania State University.
Education
Loyola University Chicago
Ph.D.
Philosophy
2019
Loyola Marymount University
M.A.
Philosophy
2012
Pennsylvania State University
B.A.
Economics and Political Science
2007
Areas of Expertise
Courses
BCOR 4910: Business Ethics and Sustainability
What is the purpose of business? And why? And what are your aims as a future leader in business? How should you conduct business? And why? This course analyzes business as a human enterprise and an ethical practice, as businesses are composed of humans with distinct values that inform their behaviors and decisions—decisions that have an impact on society at both the micro and macro levels. Business Ethics and Sustainability will focus on the interaction and importance of social, political, economic, and environmental forces in business and society, while probing why and how we go about making ethical-moral judgments in our lives, with an eye on sustainability as a vital value. Using the framework of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals, students will study the moral responsibility of business for societal and environmental impacts. Emphasis is placed on understanding and applying ethical decision models to a variety of stakeholder issues, which will include a substantial investigation into the underlying normative ethical theories and socio-political factors that impact business's broader responsibilities.
Articles
"Why the Triple Bottom Line Fails: Advancing the Jesuit Vision for Business Education,"
under reviewTrevor Zink, Melissa Fitzpatrick, Justin Nordin, Jeff Thies
2025-07-14
This paper critiques the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) framework as conceptually flawed, pedagogically misleading, and ethically insufficient for sustainability education. While TBL aims to balance profit, people, and planet, its logic prioritizes profitability, rendering social and environmental goals conditional and marginal. We argue that this framing undermines critical thinking, moral imagination, and ecological literacy in business students—especially within Jesuit institutions, which are called to form conscientious leaders. Drawing on Catholic Social Thought and the Jesuit educational tradition, we propose a reorientation of business purpose around economic sufficiency rather than profit maximization, guided by integral ecology and the common good. This shift invites a more honest engagement with tradeoffs and fosters the formation of ecological citizens capable of imagining just and sustainable economic systems.
Levinasian Responsibility and the Normativity of Care: Toward a Vulnerability-Responsive Ethics
under reviewJustin Nordin
2025-06-20
In this paper, I extend the normative implications of Emmanuel Levinas’s notion of ethical responsibility by drawing insights from feminist care ethics. The point of comparison between Levinas and care ethics centers on the ethical significance both attribute to human vulnerability and relationality. Levinas famously describes ethical responsibility as an infinite, asymmetrical demand arising from the neediness and vulnerability of the human other—a demand that precedes choice and understanding, and that constitutes subjectivity as being for-the-other. While this view reveals an ethical orientation at the heart of subjectivity and, as many have shown, accounts for how others are themselves encountered as a ‘normative force’ to which I cannot be indifferent, it is widely thought to resist development into any normative theory. In response to this view, I argue, drawing largely off the work of Eva Kittay, that care ethics—by focusing on care as a culturally situated practice that generates vulnerability-responsive obligations—provides normative scaffolding that can help us navigate competing responsibilities and generate claims to justice while preserving the ethical asymmetry that Levinas claims constitutes the specifically ethical moment of our relation to others.
