Business ethics

Comments for this Make Your Case installment are now closed. Thanks to all who participated. This week’s guest commentator, Marshall Goldsmith, has posted his response to your comments and shared some thoughts of his own below. The opening to your cube is darkened by the familiar figure of a longtime colleague. Though you’re his immediate […]

When Ben Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac and the words, “A little neglect may breed great mischief,” he did not have price fixing in mind. To the 47 executives in companies in the folding-box industry convicted of price fixing, however, the words seem tailored to fit. In those companies convicted under antitrust laws in 1976, […]

The trade-offs can be complex.

Just as people can develop skills and abilities over time, they can learn to be more or less ethical. Yet many organizations limit ethics training to...

As the 1990s overtake us, public interest in ethics is at a historic high. While the press calls attention to blatant derelictions on Wall Street, in the defense industry, and in the Pentagon, and to questionable activities in the White House, in the attorney general’s office, and in Congress, observers wonder whether our society is […]

Business has become one of the primary players in structuring the global economy and, by extension, global governance. This places new demands on business...

It’s impressive that Warren Buffett has earned billions of dollars. It’s even more impressive that he’s the only billionaire with the good grace and social conscience to state the obvious: people like him ought to be paying far higher taxes than they do, especially in these debt-riddled times. But what’s most impressive about Warren Buffett […]

A three-step process will make everyone less stressed and more productive.

As anyone with the slightest interest in the consulting business knows by now, the SEC has brought civil charges against Rajat Gupta in the Galleon insider-trading case. What makes the matter fascinating to industry watchers, approximately their equivalent of the Charlie Sheen supernova, is that Gupta served three terms as managing director of McKinsey & […]

Joseph Jett’s account of his tumultuous career on Wall Street isn’t just a story of racism and greed. It’s also a cautionary tale for knowledge workers.

Research shows that these systems are often discriminatory, alienating, and deeply stressful for job seekers.

Using the collective “we” might increase misconduct, according to research.

May 2009 will go down as a turning point in Britain's parliamentary history. Over the last three weeks, the Daily Telegraph has published shocking details...

A bad hire costs over $12,000, but a good one is worth only $5,000.

A review of the research.

In 2005, Harry C. Stonecipher, CEO of Boeing and one of America’s most highly respected corporate leaders, was asked by the company’s Board of Directors to resign his post. The reason was Stonecipher’s affair with Debra Peabody, a Boeing vice president. There was no charge of sexual harassment and no indication that Stonecipher had given […]

It’s the trillion dollar question. Justin Fox, in a recent post here, put it this way: “I don’t think anyone has come up with an argument for or description of better business behavior that has anything like the elegance and power of the economists’ ‘incentives matter.’ As long as it remains possible to get rich […]

A rigorous code of ethics will make you a better manager. Society will benefit, too.

This post is part of our in-depth look at Obama's First 90 Days in office. What a difference a few days can make to the trajectory of a transition. At...

“Changing yourself in the job, especially if you’re doing well, is one of the hardest things to do.”

Susan Johnson, founder and CEO of Medfield Pharmaceuticals, is faced with conflicting recommendations for extending the patent life of the company's flagship...

Valley Farms International (VFI) describes some of the problems and issues involved in selling and exporting dairy cattle to a middle-east country. The...

Witnessing numerous lawsuits alleging that online platform companies misclassified workers as contractors when they were actually employees, Handy's founders...

This case follows the development of Daddy Lab, a Chinese social enterprise founded in 2015 by Wenfeng Wei. With extensive experience in product safety...

In September 2021, Apple decided to delay updates to iOS and iPadOS that included features to fight child sexual abuse. While many-including prominent...

The HH.ru case series tracks the development of a respected NASDAQ-listed Russian technology company as it struggles with the fallout of the Russian invasion...

This case describes the March 2018 Ransomware attack on the information technology (IT) systems of the city of Atlanta and the response by Mayor Keisha...

In November 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried's multi-billion-dollar crypto exchange, FTX, collapsed, wiping out investors and throwing the crypto industry into...

Gun control is an important issue in American politics. In 2014, in light of recent gun violence, gun control advocate organizations lobbied retailers...

This case is written from the perspective of Ting-ting Loh, CEO of Aguila Safety Group (ASG). A prominent UK-based personal protective equipment (PPE)...

Executive Director Nicole Fuhsel faced a difficult decision: Was she going to take a more resource-light approach and do the bare minimum to simply meet...

This case describes how Canature, whose main business is water filtration, spent like crazy to build a Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) system, turning its...

Supplement to case IES524. This is a two part case study that describes a situation of passive extortion faced by Andrew Smith, the director of the division...

Working with Shell's country manager for Nigeria, the company's Committee of Managing Directors must decide how to respond to the Nigerian government's...

Beth Collins, CFO of Software Sense, an American multinational computer hardware and software developer, contemplated various ways that her publicly traded...

In this B case, the follow-up to UV7854, Marissa Levine, the Virginia Commissioner of Health, considers reports for and against the merger of two health...

Set in early October 2017, this case follows Utz Claassen, the founder and chairman of Syntellix - a medical parts company that specialised in the research,...

The partner continues to export cattle and to face and solve problems regarding transportation. The cattle inspectors from the middle-eastern country...

Provides an overview of the seven elements of negotiation analysis. These elements include BATNAs (nonagreement walk-aways), parties, interests, value-creation,...

This case presents an ethical quandary faced by Rob Edwards, director of trust and safety of a large New Zealand-based C2C (customer-to-customer) online...

Comments for this Make Your Case installment are now closed. Thanks to all who participated. This week’s guest commentator, Marshall Goldsmith, has posted his response to your comments and shared some thoughts of his own below. The opening to your cube is darkened by the familiar figure of a longtime colleague. Though you’re his immediate […]

Susan Johnson, founder and CEO of Medfield Pharmaceuticals, is faced with conflicting recommendations for extending the patent life of the company's flagship...

When Ben Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac and the words, “A little neglect may breed great mischief,” he did not have price fixing in mind. To the 47 executives in companies in the folding-box industry convicted of price fixing, however, the words seem tailored to fit. In those companies convicted under antitrust laws in 1976, […]

The trade-offs can be complex.

Harvard Business Review special issues are timely, single-theme collections of HBR articles written by some of the world's leading management scholars...

Just as people can develop skills and abilities over time, they can learn to be more or less ethical. Yet many organizations limit ethics training to...

As the 1990s overtake us, public interest in ethics is at a historic high. While the press calls attention to blatant derelictions on Wall Street, in the defense industry, and in the Pentagon, and to questionable activities in the White House, in the attorney general’s office, and in Congress, observers wonder whether our society is […]

Business has become one of the primary players in structuring the global economy and, by extension, global governance. This places new demands on business...

It’s impressive that Warren Buffett has earned billions of dollars. It’s even more impressive that he’s the only billionaire with the good grace and social conscience to state the obvious: people like him ought to be paying far higher taxes than they do, especially in these debt-riddled times. But what’s most impressive about Warren Buffett […]

A three-step process will make everyone less stressed and more productive.