Reading for Ethics

For a crash course in understanding the issues in business ethics, consider the following:

Aquinas, Thomas St. “Summa Theologica,” Questions 55, 58, 61-63, from THE MORAL TEACHING OF ST. THOMAS (Burns & Oates:1896), pp. 155, 167-74,197-187.

Aristotle, “Moral Virtue,” in THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS OF ARISTOTLE (Oxford University Press:1959), as translated by W.D. Ross, originally written circa 340 B.C., pp. 28-29.

Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1,” in ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS (Oxford University Press: 1973), originally written circa 384 B.C., pp. 41-60.

Baucus, Melissa S. and David A. Baucus, “Paying the Piper: An Empirical Examination of Longer-Term Financial Consequences of Illegal Corporate Behavior,” 40 Academy of Mgt. J. 129 (1997).

Bok, Sissela, LYING: MORAL CHOICE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE (Random House:1978).

Carr, Albert Z., “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?” 46 Harvard Business Review(1968).

Confucius, ANALECTS (Oxford University Press:1993), originally written in the 6th to 5th century B.C., pp. 58 and 62.

Drucker, Peter, “The Ethics of Responsibility,” from MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (Harper Row:1973)

Freeman, R.E. and D. L. Reed 1983. Stockholders and Stakeholders: a New Perspective on Corporate Governance. California Management Review (25): 88

Rock, I. 1990. The Legacy of Solomon Asch. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, p. 3
Franklin, Benjamin, THE ART OF VIRTUE (Acorn:1996).

Friedman, Milton, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, September 13, 1970.

Hammurabi (The Code), ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN TEXTS RELATING TO THE OLD TESTAMENT, ed. by James Pritchard (Princeton University Press:1969), written in 1792-1750 B.C., p. 175.

Hatano, Daryl, “Should Corporations Exercise Their Freedom of Speech Rights?” 22 American Business Law Journal 165 (1984).

Hayek, F.A., THE ROAD TO SERFDOM (50th anniversary edition 1994)) (University of Chicago Press:1972).

Hobbes, Thomas, LEVIATHAN (Dent:1914), first published in 1651, pp. 289-297.

Jennings, Marianne M., “The Tony Bennett Factor,” Wall Street Journal, June 26, 1995, A12.

Jennings, Marianne M., “Trendy Causes No Substitute for Virtue in Business,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 1, 1997, A22.

Jennings, Marianne M., “Confessions of a Business Ethicist,” Wall Street Journal, September 25, 1995, A14.

Jennings, Marianne M., BUSINESS ETHICS: CASE STUDIES AND SELECTED READINGS, 7th ed. (Cengage:2011).

Jennings, Marianne M., SEVEN SIGNS OF ETHICAL COLLAPSE, 353 pp. St. Martin’s Press (2006).

Jennings, Marianne M., A BUSINESS TALE: A STUDY OF ETHICS, CHOICES, SUCCESS – AND A VERY LARGE RABBIT, 127 pp., Amacom Books (2003).

Jennings, Marianne M., BUILDING A BUSINESS THROUGH GOOD TIMES AND BAD: LESSONS FROM 15 COMPANIES, EACH WITH A CENTURY OF DIVIDENDS, 259 pp. Greenwood Press, with Louis Grossman (2002).

Jennings, M. 2003. Restoring Ethical Gumption in the Corporation: A Federalist Paper on Corporation Governance: Restoration of Active Virtue in the Corporate Structure to Curb the “Yeehaw Culture” in Organizations, forthcoming in Wyoming Law Review.

Jennings (2), M.M. 2001. Are Business Schools Antibusiness. Across the Board (38):29.

Jesus, “The Sermon on the Mount,” MATTHEW 5:1-20

Kant, Immanuel, “The Categorical Imperative,” from “The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals,” in THE PHILOSOPHY OF IMMANUEL KANT, as translated by L.W. Beck (University of Chicago Press:1949) first published in 1785, pp. 55-63, 180-186.

Locke, John, Second Treatise on Civil Government, in SOCIAL CONTRACT (Oxford University Press:1960), originally published in 1690, pp. 7-9, 14-15, 23-26.

McCoy, Bowen (“Buzz”), “The Parable of the Sadhu,” 61 Harvard Business Review (1983).

Mill, John Stuart, THE ETHICS OF JOHN STUART MILL (Blackwood & Sons: 1897), pp. 89-127.

Morris, Tom, IF ARISTOTLE RAN GENERAL MOTORS: THE NEW SOUL OF A BUSINESS (Henry Holt:1997).

Nash, Laura, “Ethics Without the Sermon,” 59 Harvard Business Review (1981).

Nietzsche, Frederick on herd mentality in BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL (Henry Regnery:1955), pp. 110-111, originally published in 1886.

Novak, Michael, BUSINESS AS A CALLING (Free Press: 1994).

Novak, Michael, THE FIRE OF INVENTION: CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE FUTURE OF THE CORPORATION (Rowman & Littlefield: 1996).

Plato, “Morality as Good In Itself,” THE REPUBLIC (Macmillan:1892), pp. 18-25.

Plato, Gorgias, (Penguin:1960), , originally written circa 427 B.C., pp. 77-79, 84-105.
Rand, Ayn, THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS (Signet:1961).

Rand, Ayn, CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL (Signet: 1967).

Rawls, John, A THEORY OF JUSTICE (Harvard University Press:1972), pp. 26-27.

Smith, Adam, AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS (Dent:1776) (1910 republication).

Smith, Adam, THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS (Wells & Lilly: 1817)

Stark, Andrew, “What’s the Matter With Business Ethics?” 71 Harvard Business Review(1993).

Stearns, J.M. and S. Borna. 1998. A Comparison of the Ethics of Convicted Felons and Graduate Business Students: Implications for Business Practice and Business Ethics Education. Teaching Business Ethics 2(1):175-195.

Torah, THE BABYLONIAN TALMUD: SHABBATH (The Soncino Press:1938), translated by M. Freedman, written circa 30 A.D., p. 140.

CASES (Harvard Business School)
Marriott International and Marriott Host: The Debt Spin-Off
Pepsi in India
Otis Elevator in Vietnam
Ford Motor Company Earnings
Al Dunlap at Sunbeam
OTHER CASES
FINOVA Capital Corporation
Dell Corporation: pre- and post-contract and earnings restatements
Enron: pre-collapse and post-collapse
Martha Stewart
Tyco International
Goldman Sachs: pre-2008 and post-2008
Baptist Foundation of Arizona
New Era Philanthropy
WorldCom: pre- and post-collapse

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The R-rated revelation from Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) that may wreck his marriage, ruin his career and destroy his reputation appears to be the result of a one-letter typo: “@” instead of “D.”

Biannca Bosker, Huffington Post. Actually, what cost Mr. Weiner all of those things was his conduct. Getting caught is not the issue; that was inevitable. The only question was how much time it would take. Three people can keep a secret if two are dead. At last count, Mr. Weiner had lurid tweets to six women. Mr. Weiner lost his career, ruined his reputation, and hurt his wife and marriage when he sent the first suggestive tweet years ago.

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Still more in the tangled web arena — Anthony Weiner

Congressman Weiner backed off the “Someone hacked by Twitter account” story and admitted his problem with and habit of inappropriate texting, tweeting, e-mailing, and so forth. Inappropriate? Dang bad judgment! How do these men find time for this? The Barometer’s work is clearly more demanding than the work of governors, senators, and members of Congress. These men have too much time on their hands.

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Should CEOs Who Have Resigned in Infamy Leave Their Board Positions?

The Wall Street Journal’s Joann S. Lublin’s June 6th article on boards that keep CEOs on board, as it were, after their “humble exits” from their own companies missed two critical points.

The first point centers on the term “humble exit.” Humble exit was a euphemism for everything from “run out of town on a rail” to “falsified his résumé” to “paid the SEC a fine for wrongfully passing along information to analysts about his publicly traded company” to “generally lacking business acumen.” Depends on the meaning of the term “humble exit.” The article indulges the clouded reasoning that allows these CEOs to remain on their boards.

There is no question that humbly exiting CEOs have business experience and insight to offer, but they need a break – time between their exits and offering expertise, particularly when there has been misconduct or utter failure of their companies. It staggers the imagination to try and figure out why former Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron Continue reading

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More in the Tangled Web Department: Schwarzenegger and Vick

Arnold Schwarzenegger — at least Mr. Edwards only took two years to admit paternity. Mr. Schwarzenegger took 14 years. The timeline for the former governor is just too painful to recount, from the fact that his mistress and wife were pregnant at the same time to the failure to correct the birth certificate once he knew to waiting until his terms as governor ended. All are punished and then some on this one as well.

Michael Vick has an autobiography being released this week — out of that dog-fighting prison mess come these words of wisdom on tangled webs, “My propensity for trying to lie my way out of trouble only made my consequences more severe. . . . If I had just told the truth Continue reading

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In the “Oh, what a tangled web” department — John Edwards is indicted

John Edwards, twice a presidential candidate, once a nominee for vice president, once a United States senator, and a multi-millionarie trial lawyer, was indicted on six counts yesterday by a federal grand jury for violations of federal campaign finance laws. The charges center on his transfers of funds to Rielle Hunter, a former campaign aide, with whom Mr. Edwards had an affair and a child. The amount involved was $900,000 Continue reading

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Weeding Out Rogues

One of the Barometer’s most frequently asked questions is, “How can you screen rogues out of your company when you are hiring?” The first response is that you can’t always screen them out – you hope that you have the culture and processes to weed them out. However, we really could do a better job of judging ethical depth. Here are some questions to think about asking:

Describe an ethical dilemma you have faced on the job and how you handled it. If the applicant can’t think of one or describes something that is really not an ethical dilemma – you have some terrific insight into their character.

Barry Salzberg, the CEO of Deloitte, uses these questions:
What values are most important to you?
How have you demonstrated your commitment to those values in the past two years?

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Fix a Ticket, Compromise Trust, and Undermine the Criminal Justice System

That’s the way it has always been done,” is a classic rationalization used to justify unethical conduct. Regardless of whether we have the data to show that “always” is true, we still issue this shield of justification. Only in New York City it really is true about fixing tickets. As one prosecutor noted, “This stuff has been happening since the beginning of time.” In 1951, the ticket ledger for Manhattan’s 20th precinct disappeared during an investigation of officers who were suspected of killing traffic citations.

Following that experience, the city required that tickets be written up in quadruplicate so that even if one set of records disappeared, there would be copies. Corruption does not let multiple copies get in the way of ticket avoidance. Just three years after the 1951 scandal, over 100 N.Y.P.D. officers were accused of selling $10 courtesy cards. If you were a courtesy-card-carrying individual, Continue reading

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“There’s nothing new to say about it (euthanasia). It’s been discussed to death.” Dr. Jack Kevorkian, assisted suicide advocate, who died June 3, 2011 at age 83.

Indeed. Interesting that Dr. Kevorkian died in a hospital while being treated for kidney and respiratory problems. Better for thee than me.

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Andrew Fastow Leaves Prison — Now in a Houston Half-Way House

Andrew Fastow, the former CFO of Enron, who entered a guilty plea to fraud and other charges as part of a plea bargain, has left federal prison in Louisiana for a Houston half-way house. Mr. Fastow’s six-year sentence ends on December 17, and he is eligible for home confinement in June. When he reported to prison, he left two young children and his wife behind. He will return home to find teens. The Barometer hopes that Mr. Fastow finds a new life telling his story to executives so that their actions in business do not find them in such a homecoming. Mr. Fastow’s steel-trap mind has been a great help Continue reading

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“French Can’t Fathom IMF Chief’s Prosecution: U.S. Justice System and Morals Differ.”

Headline USA Today, May 19, 2011, p. 3B. Yes, and thank goodness we do worry about chamber maids who have to be taken to hospitals after working the $3,000 per night shift.

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Hank Greenberg, AIG, and Lessons For All

A new book, “Fatal Risk,” by Roddy Best, is an instructive look at what happened at AIG.  The book does what a business book should do – look for root causes when you have a company such as AIG implode. We don’t demonize – we learn.  Greenberg was a micromanager who served the company well, until it got too large.  Greenberg got diversified beyond his and AIG’s expertise. “Fatal Risk” also describes another lesson: The road to cooking the books is a gradual one Continue reading

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Is That “Watch” or “Stake-Out”? Xinhua Finance and Loretta Fredy Bush

In 2004, The Wall Street Journal called Loretta Fredy Bush, the founder of Xinhua Finance, one of its “Women to Watch” for 2004. We may have misunderstood the meaning of the term “watch.”  Ms. Fredy Bush was indicted on May 10, 2011 for conspiracy, mail fraud, and the usual components of insider trading related to shares in a Xinhua subsidiary.  We didn’t know “to watch” meant we were to hold stake-outs.

However, even minimal observations of Ms. Fredy Bush would have been revealing. Shortly after the Journal published Continue reading

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What Is It About International Finance? Poor Judgment and the IMF and the World Bank

Paul Wolfowitz resigned in 2007 as head of the World Bank after a tale emerged of his HR intervention on behalf of a bank executive he was dating. Managers not dating those who report to them is one of those logical HR rules – probably a bad idea.  Wolfowitz  defended his actions until he was blue in the fact, but the world saw otherwise, and he had to go.

Now the UN twin, the IMF, finds itself with a managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who faces charges of sexually assaulting a chamber maid in his $3,000 per night hotel suit in Manhattan. New York police officers yanked him off a plane Continue reading

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