Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet

This is a penetrating exploration of the challenge of business ethics – free of preachy prescriptions – from three of today’s most influential psychologists. The book, based on a five-year study of multiple professions, examines the kinds of changes that would probably need to occur in business management for ethics-oriented systems to take root.

Turning Risk into Reward

Responsible information management allows you to achieve compliance with regulations,
create trust with your users and benefit yourself while you’re at it.

Elements of the US Federal Sentencing Guidelines

The benefits of establishing an ethical environment can be countless but sometimes are difficult to measure. One area where companies can see a concrete, substantial benefit comes from establishing a program that meets the seven requirements of the US Federal Sentencing Commission’s Organizational Guidelines.

Harold Evans

The recognition of the tension between values and numbers is the first requirement of the strategic manager, and it is the effective reconciliation of that tension that marks a great manager.

2002: The Year of the Apology

Earlier this fall, Safeway, a food retailer based in Pleasanton, Calif., took out radio and television ads apologizing to customers of some recently-acquired grocery stores for changes in these stores’ operations. Safeway joined what seems to be a long list of apologizers – from investment bankers to fast food corporations – who have recently expressed regret for a variety of mistakes. With a year full … [ Read more ]

Want a Company You Can Be Truly Proud of? Try a Business Ethics Program

Business ethics are about the morally functional nature of our business relationships. Because these relationships are such an important part of daily life, giving them the attention and care they deserve is crucial to an organization’s success.

Establishing Corporate Ethics – Part 1

To determine what ethics we should adopt, we must first decide what ethics are or what being ethical means. In other words, what are the right ethics to have?

Edward Thurlow, Lord Chancellor of England

Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned and no body to be kicked?

How Bribery and Other Types of Corruption Threaten the Global Marketplace

In Turkey, the apartment buildings that collapse during earthquakes are known as “bribe buildings.” In Africa, bridges dot the landscape with no roads to connect them. There’s no doubt that corruption, endemic in emerging economies around the world, throws economic development into chaos. It affects decisions made by bureaucrats, degrades the quality of those in power, and discourages foreign investment. Wharton legal studies professor Phil … [ Read more ]

10 Simple Rules For Conducting Ethics Investigations

Ethics investigations can be quite complex and fraught with potential risks. Taking care with them will allow the company to avoid pitfalls in both a legal and human sense.

The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart

Seglin (department of Writing, Literature and Publishing, Emerson College) shows managers how to navigate everyday moral business dilemmas regarding pay, hiring and firing, and other issues, using real-life examples to demonstrate the difference between a “gray area” and an outright misdeed. He discusses the line between lying and posturing, addresses the question of spying on competitors, and tells how to align personal beliefs with business … [ Read more ]

Take the Pledge – The CIO’s Code of Ethical Data Management

Data has no ethics. Data doesn’t care how it’s used. But the use and misuse of data has become the critical issue for today’s information-intensive enterprise. And now CIOs are working to develop a code for ethical data management.

Want a Company You Can Be Truly Proud of? Try a Business Ethics Program

Business ethics are about the morally functional nature of our business relationships. Because these relationships are such an important part of daily life, giving them the attention and care they deserve is crucial to an organization’s success.

Processes and Consequences in Business Ethical Dilemmas

What do corporations do when their products may be detrimental to society as a whole? In this recent working paper, Sybille van den Hove and Professors Marc Le Menestrel and Henri-Claude de Bettignies explore how processes and consequences constitute a useful framework for understanding how businesses face ethical dilemmas and examine the question of businesses’ good faith.

Whistleblowing Towards Quality

Influential voices are suggesting that far from whistleblowing – informing on organizations that commit illegal or unethical acts, provide poor value for money, or endanger health and safety – being subversive and undesirable, it may sometimes deserve high praise. The increasing interest in business ethics has gone hand-in-glove with the interest in whistleblowing.

Ya-Who? A Modern Ethical Dilemma

Consider the ethical debate of cyber responsibility – who carries the weight in an unaccountable environment? A French court asked the question in 2000, when Nazi memorabilia was being auctioned on Yahoo!’s Internet site. Professor Marc Le Menstrel, Mark Hunter and Professor Henri-Claude de Bettignies delineate the legal, technical, philosophical, and managerial perspectives as they examine how firms handle the sometimes difficult social consequences of … [ Read more ]