Work in Progress with Christopher Michaelson, discusses every working person’s work in progress, namely, our quest to be fully human in a working world that all too often makes us feel like machines, in which we often don’t even have time to think, and that, in the words of Studs Terkel, too often feels like “a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

In this episode, host Michaelson and two guests: The book reviewer, Fordham University Gabelli School of Business Assistant Professor, Santiago Meija, and University of St. Thomas Associate Professor of Marketing & Academic Director of Business in a Digital World, Lisa Abendroth discuss the book Klara and the Sun written by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro. Klara and the Sun is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF), with incredible observational qualities of humans and humanity; designed to learn and subsequently imitate human behavior, Klara is bought, sold, and tossed into serving as a friend for a girl. While discussing the book's plot, Michaelson, Meija and Abendroth examine its underlying themes including the nature of intelligence, the cost of progress, and the identification and value of "real" relationships.

This book review was also published in The Journal of Business Ethics (JBE) to answer two questions: "Is this book worth reading?" and "What ideas or questions will this book illuminate for anyone with interest in business ethics?"

With special thanks for the support of the University of St. Thomas Opus College Business in a Digital World Initiative and the Melrose & The Toro Company Center for Principled Leadership.

Thanks for listening to Work in Progress with Christopher Wong Michaelson.