All articles tagged: ethics

Corporate governance expert Nell Minow explains the relationship between outlandish severance packages and the risky financial instruments linked to subprime mortgages.

There’s no single path to authentic leadership, says the former Medtronic chief executive. We must all discover our own.

Life Lessons

How to confront the moral tensions inherent in corporate life and come out with your ethics intact.

In today’s high-pressure work environment, it is not unusual for conflicts to arise between our values as individuals and the compromises that we must make for our organizations. Overcoming these challenges may mean taking a broader view of our work and focusing less on traditional notions of “winning.” Such efforts are worthwhile: The corporate world can be the best vantage point from which to pursue and achieve larger goals, such as unlocking human potential or improving society. Here’s how to “deal with the devil” — to confront the moral tensions inherent in corporate life and come out with our ethics intact.

The swift pace of change makes understanding Silicon Valley a daunting task. Here are resources that can help.

Chronicles of the “Dogs of War”

Old stories, new jobs, technological hype, and gay leadership.

An idiosyncratic economist preaches the innate morality of business.

America’s most eminent pollster says the current epidemic of business scandals must be healed through a shift in norms, not laws.

When companies come together to save the world, what’s more compelling — environmental results or competitive advantage?

Enron and Other Moral Hazards

Our second annual guide includes 10 essays covering subjects of perennial interest — management, leadership, strategy, and ethics — and new topics relevant to this particular time, including globalization, managing in the "new Europe," the science of networks, and women leaders.

How you lead your leaders is just as important as the guidance they give you.

You don’t have to be a CEO to create an environment that supports action. You just need a flair for imaginative networking.

For executives who want to do good and do well, some long-awaited guidebooks.

A.B.B., The Dancing Giant: Creating the Globally Connected Corporation by Kevin Barham and Claudia Heimer (260 pages, Pitman Publishing Ltd., 1998)

What is the job of the board of directors? To make certain the chief executive succeeds. How does it do it? By working closely with the chief executive in a collaborative relationship.

Levers of Control: How Managers Use Innovative Control Systems to Drive Strategic Renewal by Robert Simons (217 pages, Harvard Business School Press, 1995)

Elizabeth Doty is a former lab fellow of Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and founder of Leadership Momentum, a consultancy that focuses on the practical challenges of keeping organizational commitments.

James O’Toole is director of the Neely Center for Ethical Leadership at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

Diverse workplaces require emotional maturity, and that means confronting “rankism.”