See Untangling the Confusion over Organizational Ethics, first published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Summer 2013) x

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22 May 2013

Untangling the Confusion Over Organizational Ethics

This article was first published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Summer 2013). 

A wave of ethics transgressions underlines the importance of comprehensive ethics oversight for organizational success.

Last year, 2012, was in many regards a step forward for proponents of ethical action. Roger Gifford, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, one of the world’s financial capitals, declared business ethics a priority and critical to the City’s economic success. François Hollande published a Code of Ethics within 11 days of becoming president of France. And the new Chinese premier, Xi Jinping, highlighted the ongoing danger of corruption to economic and social development as a central part of his election discourse. Read more →

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22 Feb 2013

Missing the Point: Lessons From Novartis: Shareholders Win the Compensation Revolt but Lose the Ethics Revolution

The actions and commentary surrounding the recent shareholder revolt over the proposed $78 million payment to departing Novartis Chairman Daniel Vasella offer a range of ethics and governance lessons. These are critical across all sectors from corporate to non-profit to governmental. My purpose is never to attack an individual leader, an organization, or commentators. My intent here is learning, especially as it seems inconceivable that this kind of situation could continue to occur following the relentless say on pay and other ethics events of 2012. Read more →

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22 Jan 2013

Lance Armstrong Part II: “Winning at All Costs”: Organizational Doping or Strategically Integrated Unethical Behavior

Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey this week reinforced his driving objective of “win at all costs”. However, the question that Oprah never directly asked during her provocative discussion was whether he ever thought he had really won when accepting the trophies after so intentionally and consistently cheating. There was not a single Tour de France race that he actually won clean. Read more →

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02 Jan 2013

Intentional Ethics

January 1 often kicks off with intentions: New Year’s resolutions. The importance of intentions also surfaces widely in spiritual, political, literary, and philosophical works too numerous for a blog, as well as in criminal law (e.g. intentional murder versus manslaughter) and various social interactions (“it’s the thought that counts”). However, in ethics oversight organizational leaders all too often fail to clarify the intentions underlying ethics initiatives. That is, instead of focusing on intended ethics outcomes, they stop short and consider the analysis complete upon identification of a list of ethics actions. Read more →
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17 Dec 2012

It’s Not About Perfection

Perfection is not possible … imperfection is not an excuse

The recently updated guidelines to the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices entitled A Resource Guide to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (November 2012) offers myriad helpful principles, case studies, and clarifications to facilitate compliance and proactive engagement with the authorities on various issues potentially covered by the FCPA. However, perhaps the most useful and reassuring guiding principle appears late in the document in Chapter 5 “Guiding Principles of Enforcement”: neither the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) nor the Department of Justice (DOJ) seek perfection. Nor should you. Read more →

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26 Sep 2012

Managing The Swerve

I just finished Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt’s fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable The Swerve [1]. Professor Greenblatt guides us through the wanderings of the main character, book hunter Poggio Barcciolini, who finds the lost manuscript of  Lucretius’ poem “On the Nature of the Universe” that was to influence the start of the Renaissance and scientific and humanistic thought for centuries thereafter. The book’s key underlying theme, the unexpected collisions of tiny particles as a foundation for the universe, leads this blog to ask how events and people engaged in business, the non-profit sector, or academia (organizational atoms) handle unexpected collisions. In terms of organizational ethics analysis, three types of swerve emerge: (i) swerve that isn’t swerve (i.e., unexpected collisions that should have been expected); (ii) swerve that is really changing times (i.e., evolution not collision); and (iii) genuine swerve (i.e., the truly unexpected collisions that rigorous, forward-looking ethics oversight helps organizations and individuals sidestep or address gracefully). Read more →

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27 Aug 2012

Sweat the Small Ethics Stuff to Avoid the Big Ethics Situation

I recently reread renowned Stanford University Professor Philip Zimabardo’s brilliant essay “The Psychology of Power”. [1] Using examples from Abu Ghraib to his own famous prison experiments, Professor Zimbardo reminds us that we “are all subject to…underemphasizing situational explanations” while overemphasizing “individual orientations”.[2] Read more →

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