An Appropriate Ethical Model for Business and a Critique of Milton Friedman’s Thesis
The goals of this article are to propose a free-market model of business ethics for firms of all sizes and types (by describing a past attempt to promote such a standard), to comment on the history of regulation and on the emergence and teachings of the discipline of “business ethics,” and to argue that Friedman’s perspective on corporate responsibility as outlined in 1970 and his … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Author: Richard W. Wilcke | Source: The Independent Review | Subjects: Economics, Ethics
Why Teams Don’t Perform: Knowing and Understanding the Performance Barriers
Teams that aren’t performing well or those being formed that won’t ever perform well are the victims of a mismatch of people with the project, the process, and the product. In quantifying these factors, the most complex and critical success element ‘the people who will do the work’ is often overlooked. While there are numerous reasons why teams fail, this paper has identified those that … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Source: Customer Manufacturing Group | Subject: Organizational Behavior
Stanley Milgram
Control the manner in which a man interprets his world, and you have gone a long way toward controlling his behavior.
Content: Quotation | Source: Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior
Tom Penderghast
Since norms, whether formal or informal, reflect some underlying values, they are difficult to change unless it can be shown that the new behavior is also consistent with an important value, or that the old value itself needs to be changed.
Content: Quotation | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior
Steven Levitt
So much of what we hear and what we’re taught turns out to be false on closer scrutiny. Whether it is expert advice, what you read in the paper, or what your mother told you, if it is important, take the time to figure out for yourself whether it is really true.
Content: Quotation | Author: Steven D. Levitt | Sources: 800-CEO-READ (8CR), Business 2.0 | Subjects: Decision Making, Trends / Analysis
Milton Friedman
It’s hard to know what is meant by business ethics. Only people, not businesses, have ethics. Ethics is me, the individual, as a person. I’m ethical or unethical. If I’m employed in a business that I think is unethical, I have a clear choice. I can get out of that business and find something else to do. It doesn’t seem to me it’s ethical for … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Ethics
Milton Friedman
Nobody really believes that it’s an ethical precept that you obey every law. If you obey a law that requires you to do something that is unethical or amoral, I think everybody in the room would agree it’s a proper human behavior to break that law as long as you’re willing to accept the responsibility for that. That was the justification for conscientious objection during … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Ethics, Legal
Bowen H. “Buzz” McCoy
In globalization we can come closer together, but we still don’t know one another. We can start up a new business fast, but growing wise in the way of life takes a long time. It’s never complete, never right, and never perfect. An ethic is deeper than morality or custom. It comes out of our deepest desire to make meaning out of our lives and … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Culture, Integrity
George Bernard Shaw
The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
Content: Quotation | Source: CEO Refresher | Subject: Communication
Why Office Design Matters
You want to concentrate and collaborate, but how can you get the best of both worlds in your current office set-up? An excerpt from Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performance and Results from Knowledge Workers.
Content: Article | Author: Thomas H. Davenport | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Organizational Behavior
The Importance of Things
Businesses aren’t based around relationships, as current theories of organisation would have us believe. They are based around physical things. So what are the implications for leaders, managers and employees?
Content: Article | Author: Brian Moeran | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Organizational Behavior
Personal Power Sources
This article distinguishes 11 Power Sources. The combination of power sources that yield success differs by organisation. It is important to consider what matters most in your own organisation. The 11 power sources are:
* Role
* Network
* Dedication
* Expertise
* Process
* Customers
* Market
* Leadership
* Safe Hands
* Creativity
* Politics
Content: Article | Author: David West | Source: TheWorkingManager.com | Subjects: Career, Organizational Behavior
When Culture Undermines Vision
Vision creates intent. Culture determines action. Often the two are out of sync. When they are, culture can actually undermine vision and prevent a company from achieving essential business goals.
Content: Article | Author: Eric E. Olsen | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Organizational Behavior
Ken Thompson and Robin Good
Vastly superior team member intelligence, perhaps surprisingly, does not actually make a significant difference in how successful a team can be.
Since bioteaming is based on a distributed intelligence model, what really counts is the ability for the team to use its intellectual capabilities in a collective, collaborative and cooperative fashion. So while bioteams CAN easily accommodate highly intelligent team members, they do not generally require … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork
Robert Mittelstaedt
The biggest reason you do not hear much about corporate mistakes, unless they are so colossal that some government entity forces an investigation, is that most companies do not put together blue-ribbon investigative committees to find causes of failures and recommend improvements. No one would accept a statement that an airliner “just crashed-we’re not sure why, but we’ll try not to do it again.” Yet … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: BetterManagement.com | Subjects: Accountability, Mistakes
Do Talk to Strangers: Encouraging Performative Ties to Create Competitive Advantage
Imagine the following situation: You are a consultant who has just been assigned to a new project at your firm, and your first major presentation is in a week. Unfortunately, your client’s problem isn’t something you have any expertise in. Chances are, according to research by Sheen S. Levine, a professor at Singapore Management University who earned his PhD from Wharton, you would pick up … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Knowledge Management, Organizational Behavior
Managing Groups and Teams
Business Ethics in the Movies
Sometimes the most appealing Web sites are those without all the Java bells and whistles-just simple information presented simply. “What can you learn about business ethics from the movies?” wondered Carolyn Johnson, business librarian at Arizona State University. The answer is this Web site. Here you’ll find a list of movies that in some way or other offer interesting perspectives on tricky business issues. Johnson … [ Read more ]
Content: Online Resource | Author: Carolyn Johnson | Source: Arizona State University West | Subject: Ethics
Melcrum
Melcrum tracks trends in organizational development and presents best practice application of new concepts, tools and ideas to assist managers to make both profitable and responsible business decisions. Resources at the site are categorized under six main topics: corporate and internal communication, human resources, knowledge management, intranets and corporate responsibility. The structure of information at each of the six silos is similar, with a collection … [ Read more ]
Content: Online Resource | Source: MELCRUM PUBLISHING | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior
Bruce D. Henderson
Business thinking starts with an intuitive choice of assumptions. Its progress as analysis is intertwined with intuition. The final choice is always intuitive. If that were not true, all problems of almost any kind would be solved by mathematicians with nonquantitative data.
The final choice in all business decision is, of course, intuitive. It must be. Otherwise it is not a decision, just a conclusion, a … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought
