To improve ethics, changing people matters less, and changing situations matters more, than you probably think

Jonathan Haidt and I recently had the good fortune to have lunch with David Einhorn (the founder of Greenlight Capital) and his team at the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust (EFCT).  EFCT works on promoting empathy to help people get along…
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Come Work with Us

We’re looking to add an experienced communications person to our team.  Job description below. Do you believe that business can be a much greater force for good in the world?  Do you want to help us make it so? We’re a non-profit…
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The Habits of a[n Ethical] Systems Thinker

Image of Daniel Goleman via Wikimedia Commons Renowned scholars Daniel Goleman and Peter Senge have teamed up to write a book titled, The Triple Focus:  A New Approach to Education…
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Prosecutors, massive fines and moral hazard

[This essay was originally posted on the Conflict of Interest Blog.] Many years ago, I lived next door to a young police officer and his family who, while presumably paid a modest salary, drove a pretty expensive car.   He…
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The Slippery Slope to Habitual Unethical Behavior and How to Prevent It

Ethical Systems collaborator Francesca Gino has a piece in the Harvard Business Review on how unethical behavior becomes habit.  It turns out that people are much more likely to engage in unethical behavior when it occurs bit by bit, slowly…
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New proof that good ethics is good business

[This essay was originally posted to The Conflict of Interest Blog]  In a simpler economic time, the tangible rewards to oneself from doing good for others were fairly self-evident. A memorable articulation of this (from a chronicler…
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Three Stories about the Ethics of Capitalism

[Cross posted from RighteousMind.com. Ethical Systems design is a way to make the 3rd story about capitalism come true] Since moving to the NYU-Stern School of Business in 2011, I’ve been interested in the many ways that moral psychology…
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#EthSys Insights 6: Jeffrey Kaplan

#EthSys Insights is a video series where we have experts answer questions about ethical systems design. For our sixth installment, we had the honor of talking with our Compliance & Ethics Programs contributor Jeffrey Kaplan, a partner…
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Week That Was in Ethical Systems, 5/12/14-5/25/14

More Evidence That Compliance & Ethics Education Clash, in Compliance Week Ethical Systems contributors Max Bazerman and Francesca Gino have published a new paper on the differences between "values-oriented" and "structure-oriented"…
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#EthSys Insights 5: Barry Schwartz

#EthSys Insights is a video series where we have experts answer questions about ethical systems design. For our fifth installment, we had the honor of talking with Barry Schwartz, Professor of Social Theory and Social Action, Swarthmore…