Susan Liautaud has launched The Ethics Incubator : an independent, cross-sector laboratory and collaborative platform for innovative ethics. See her inaugural Ethics & The Arts interview with renowned architect Frank Gehry . Also available her interview with Novelist Sir Salman Rushdie . x

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The Biggest Unrecognized Ethics Risk

Every year I challenge students in my Stanford University Ethics on the Edge class to find new examples of drivers of ethics transgressions. Every year they do. A few years ago it was anonymous social media. The latest: the sharing economy. Is Uber spreading unethical employee practices and unsafe passenger experiences by categorizing drivers as independent contractors and defending sub-par safety checks? Or is Uber really “just a platform” and therefore justified in dumping responsibility for ethics on the technology, the users, the drivers, and society? Read more →

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Ethics Priorities for 2017: Banish the Binary

2016 was a year of landmark ethics challenges. The year closed with an unprecedented Presidential-scale conflicts of interest quagmire and alleged cyber interference with the US election. Along the way, landmark “in or out” binary decisions such as Brexit left divisiveness, uncertainty, and waste in their wake.

Looking forward to in 2017, we should focus on one element of ethical decision-making: banishing the binary. Read more →

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HOW DO SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES PREPARE STUDENTS TO MEET FUTURE BUSINESS NEEDS?

This article was first published by the French Chamber of Great Britain

That was the question posed by Philippe Chalon, Chair of the Chamber’s Economic Updates, to Peter Todd, Dean of HEC Paris and Susan Liautaud, Vice Chair of Council and Court of Governors of the London School of Economics & Political Science on the premise that education is key for the competitiveness of nations Read more →

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Mining Ethics Lessons from Leadership Research… and Miners

Iterative Ethics

This blog is the first of a series of eight blogs I will write extracting ethics lessons from research and stories that are not at the start ethics-related. It is part of a deliberate effort at synthetic organizational thinking at SLAL, tying together cross-sector organizational matters to derive learning directly and indirectly relevant to ethics. The messages are gleaned from business, non-profit, and governmental organizations, and the ethics applies to all.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article entitled “Leadership Lessons from the Chilean Mining Rescue,” Harvard Business School professors Amy C. Edmondson and Herman B. Leonard, and doctoral candidate Faaiza Rashid, explore the leadership strategies and lessons from the extraordinary 2010 Chilean mining rescue. Their insightful analysis of the 69-day ordeal, involving 33 men trapped when more than 700,000 tons of rock caved in, offers many important leadership lessons. I cite their work to extend one of these lessons to ethics: the importance of iterative leadership as a model and message of the importance of iterative organizational ethics. Read more →

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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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Curing the British National Health Service with Two Words?

The recent press storm detailing ethical failures within the NHS highlights the oversimplification (to two words) and under analysis (in two words) of the ethics challenge. This blog focuses on those two words: “moral purpose”. The key question is how will this “moral purpose” result in more ethical decision-making throughout the NHS but within the context of the NHS’ reality? Calling for a moral purpose is useful if it is shorthand for calling for on-going comprehensive ethics oversight and not a one-shot tagline. For the moment, the prescription is for these two words (with a code of ethics and dismissal of leaders as the over the counter add-ons). Read more →

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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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Pause for a While

Yale Professor Thomas Pogge admonishes us to “pause for a while and reflect on what it would be like to live on [$2 per day], equivalent in 2012 to $16.50 per week or $71.70 per month or $860 for the entire year…” and to “ask yourself whether you would consider such an existence to accord with what is affirmed in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that ‘…everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being of himself and of his family…’.” Professor Pogge then reminds us that this $2 per day is 60% above the poverty line of $1.25 per day (each 2005 value) that is “actually used within Millennium Development Goal 1” to track poverty progress.[1] Read more →

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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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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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