Salon Recap: Want an Effective Business? Foster an Ethical Culture

Update: The video of our discussion with David Sloan Wilson, Erika Cheung, and Toby Shannon is now available for viewing! Watch it here or below. On a trip to Ottawa, a few years ago, I got to tour the offices of the e-commerce company Shopify,…

A Theranos Whistleblower’s Mission to Make Tech Ethical

Several times in conversation people have asked me whether I mean Thanos, the Marvel villain, when I bring up Theranos. “No,” I say, “I mean Theranos, the tech company once valued at $9 billion before it imploded due to scandal—haven’t…

Business Roundtable Wants Fair Employee Payment, But What About Agency?

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The problem with the modern workplace is deeper than the ideology of shareholder primacy. Well into his 30s, my father ran a pool-plumbing business that just got us by: Sometimes clients wouldn’t pay, and when they did, it wouldn’t be…

Evolutionary Thinking Can Help Companies Foster More Ethical Culture

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Humans have some basic needs that work should fulfill if organizations want to get the best out of them. Charles Darwin ended The Origin of Species, his argument for evolution by natural selection, on a note of celebrated eloquence. “There…

Glassdoor Data Is Revealing the Link Between Culture and Good Business

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden elicited some playful teasing when, early in his presidential campaign, he rather quirkily took to quoting Immanuel Kant, the renowned German philosopher. In various venues, he’d paraphrase what Kant,…

Does Ideological Diversity Makes Teams More Effective?

As I was watching The Expanse, a science fiction TV series, I realized that the show demonstrates, perhaps without meaning to, the value of ideological diversity within a team. The story follows the small crew of the Rocinante as they stumble…

How This Acclaimed Entrepreneur Built an Honest Company from the Ground Up

As headlines barrage us with news of once-beloved companies turned crooked, I’ve wondered: Are the strongest ethical companies those that have embedded systems in their DNA that promote a culture of honesty from the start? Business…

“Superstore” and the Science of Pitching Social Change at Work

In an episode of NBC’s sitcom Superstore, Cheyenne, a teenage associate at a Walmart-like retail giant called Cloud-9, goes into labor on the store floor. Coworkers rush for medical supplies as customers spectate out of curiosity and boredom.…

The Case Against A.I. Controlling Our Moral Compass

Earlier this month, at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, I saw something, or someone, that would, on any other day, be out of place: a philosopher. Damon Horowitz—a philosopher at Columbia University who has a history of serial entrepreneurship…

Ethics Bots and Other Ways to Move Your Code of Business Conduct Beyond Puffery

Eugene Soltes, a professor at Harvard Business School and an expert in why people commit fraud, gave a keynote speech at our recent Ethics by Design conference on how to engineer integrity in organizations. Part of that effort involves crafting…