I always struggle with definitions of ethics and morality. Michael Jensen, of Harvard Business School throws integrity into the mix of terms. Here are his definitions: Integrity: A state or condition of being whole, complete, unbroken, unimpaired, sound, in perfect condition. Ethics: In a given group, ethics is the agreed upon standards of what is [...]
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Ethics Upgrade at Oracle?
I’m not sure what to make of Mark Hurd, Hewlett-Packard, Larry Ellison, and Oracle. HP threw Hurd out on the street for some stupid behavior. By throwing out on the street, I mean let him keep most of his compensation package. Larry Ellison immediately came to his defense. He even went a step further and [...]
EWWW! The Connections Between Disgust and Morality
What if our moral judgments are simply that a situation makes us feel like throwing up? Drake Bennett explores some of the new research and thinking in how our moral ideas may have evolved from our more visceral feelings of disgust in Ewwwwwwwww! The surprising moral force of disgust. The moral emotions model has another [...]
Carnival of Trust
The Carnival of Trust is the brainchild of Charles Green of Trust Matters. It’s intended to highlight the best posts about trust in the business and professional workspace over the previous month. He apparently ran out of worthy people to host his carnival and, in what must have been a moment of weakness, asked me [...]
School Official Disciplined for Misuse of LexisNexis
The Massachusetts State Ethics Commission fined Mark Rivera, the former Lawrence School Department Urban Affairs Liaison and Special Assistant to the School Superintendent, for misuse of his access rights to LexisNexis. The Lawrence School Department purchased access to the LexisNexis database so Rivera could obtain contact information for parents no longer living in the district, [...]
Ethics and Baseball Tickets
Baseball season is here. That means businesses will be opening their boxes and seats for entertaining clients and potential clients. Of course those tickets are gifts. How do you treat them under your company’s gifts policy or a government’s ethics policy? One typical requirement is that you pay for the tickets. Face value is the [...]
Child Climbing Mount Everest
Jordan Romero is thirteen years old. And he is departing on April 5 for his trip to climb Mount Everest. That would be an extraordinary feat. But is it ethical to allow such a young person to put himself in such a dangerous situation? (In case you are wondering, the current record for the youngest [...]
Keeping Your Colleagues Honest
Mary C. Gentile put together a great piece on how to challenge unethical behavior at work in the March issue of the Harvard Business Review: Keeping Your Colleagues Honest. She starts with four rationalizations for staying silent when encountering an ethical problem: It’s standard practice. It’s not a big deal. It’s not my responsibility. I [...]
Global Ethics Summit 2010
Today I will be in New York attending the Global Ethics Summit 2010, hosted by Dow Jones and Ethisphere. Assuming I can get an internet connection and power, I will be live-blogging from the summit. If not live, I will try to get my notes published later tonight on the train ride home. Here is [...]
Ethics of Congressional Stock Ownership
The Washington Post published a story using Congressman John Dinghell as an example of the ethics issues involved when you have an investor lawmaker: Dingells and GM illustrate limits of congressional conflict-of-interest rules. Kimberly Kindy and Robert E. O’Harrow Jr. use Congressman Dinghell because of his financial connection with General Motors. This connection was one [...]
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