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- May 2025
- Article
Punitive but Discerning: Reputation Can Fuel Ambiguously-Deserved Punishment, but Does Not Erode Sensitivity to Nuance
By: Jillian J. Jordan and Nour S. Kteily
The desire to appear virtuous can motivate people to punish wrongdoers, a desirable outcome when punishment is clearly deserved. Yet claims that “virtue signaling” is fueling a culture of outrage suggest that reputation concerns may inspire even potentially unmerited... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Corporate Actions as Moral Issues
By: Zwetelina Iliewa, Elisabeth Kempf and Oliver Spalt
We examine nonpecuniary preferences across a broad set of corporate actions using a representative sample of the U.S. population. Our core findings, based on large-scale online surveys, are that (i) self-reported nonpecuniary concerns are large both for stock market... View Details
- January 2025
- Case
Shifting Winds: DEI in Corporate America
By: Clayton S. Rose, Maisie Wiltshire-Gordon and David Lane
In the 2020s, intense and conflicting social and political pressures challenged organizational leaders around the world. Prominent among these were powerful competing views on workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI) in the United States. Public... View Details
Keywords: Disruption; Leadership; Crisis Management; Risk Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Culture; Civil Society or Community; Social Issues; Talent and Talent Management; Customer Satisfaction; Diversity; Ethics; Corporate Accountability; Employees; Retention; Recruitment; Adaptation; Programs; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; United States; Massachusetts; Maryland; Tennessee; District of Columbia
- December 2024
- Article
Managerial Pluralism: Thirty Years of Teaching Business Ethics
The author reflects on 30 years of teaching business ethics at Harvard Business School. The paper presents tactical lessons for teaching courses in professional ethics and introduces “managerial pluralism.” This concept is akin to Isaiah Berlin’s value pluralism and... View Details
- August 2024
- Background Note
Your True Moral Compass
This note explores the concept of a "moral compass" for making difficult decisions in leadership roles. It argues that the standard view of a moral compass as a simple, internal guide is inadequate for complex situations. Instead, it proposes that our true moral... View Details
- August 20, 2024
- Article
Sexual Assault Victims Face a Penalty for Adjacent Consent
By: Jillian J. Jordan and Roseanna Sommers
Across 11 experimental studies (n = 12,257), we show that female victims of sexual assault are blamed more and seen as less morally virtuous if their assault follows voluntary sexual intimacy, a factor we term “adjacent consent”. Moreover, we illuminate a... View Details
- May 2024
- Article
Moral Thin-Slicing: Forming Moral Impressions from a Brief Glance
By: Julian De Freitas and Alon Hafri
Despite the modern rarity with which people are visual witness to moral transgressions involving
physical harm, such transgressions are more accessible than ever thanks to their availability on
social media and in the news. On one hand, the literature suggests that... View Details
Keywords: Moral Judgement; Thin Slices; Social Media; Fake News; Misinformation; Moral Sensibility; News; Behavior
- April 2024 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
Market Dynamics and Moral Dilemmas: Novo Nordisk’s Weight-Loss Drugs
By: Joseph L. Badaracco, Tom Quinn and John Schultz
Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk was owned by a charitable foundation, and since its founding in the 1920s had focused on producing insulin to treat diabetes. In 2017, however, it released Ozempic, a diabetes treatment with the revolutionary side effect of... View Details
Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Decisions; Judgments; Values and Beliefs; Global Strategy; Health Care and Treatment; Patents; Growth and Development Strategy; Growth Management; Product Positioning; Supply and Industry; Supply Chain; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Opportunities; Social Issues; Equality and Inequality; Pharmaceutical Industry; Health Industry; Denmark; United States; Europe; China; India; Middle East; North Africa
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Fading Light of Democratic Capitalism: How Pervasive Cronyism and Restricted Suffrage Are Destroying Democratic Capitalism as a National Ideal…and What to Do about It
What are we to do about declining public trust and confidence in democratic capitalism, which many citizens consider a cornerstone of our national ideology and identity? While the answer is not entirely clear, I argue in this essay that any effort aimed at restoring... View Details
- January 2024
- Supplement
Accounting Red Flags or Red Herrings at Catalent? (B)
By: Joseph Pacelli, ZeSean Ali and Tom Quinn
GlassHouse Research identified accounting red flags at Catalent. Fiat Lux Partners countered most of GlassHouse’s claims. Who was right? This update explores the aftermath of the short seller duel. View Details
Keywords: Accounting Audits; Acquisition; Budgets and Budgeting; Business Earnings; Earnings Management; Cost Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Financial Reporting; Revenue Recognition; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Government Legislation; Conflict of Interests; Announcements; Blogs; Debates; Lawsuits and Litigation; Stocks; Performance Productivity; Pharmaceutical Industry; Accounting Industry; United States
- December 2023
- Article
Discerning Saints: Moralization of Intrinsic Motivation and Selective Prosociality at Work
By: Mijeong Kwon, Julia Lee Cunningham and Jon M. Jachimowicz
Intrinsic motivation has received widespread attention as a predictor of positive work outcomes, including employees’ prosocial behavior. In the current research, we offer a more nuanced view by proposing that intrinsic motivation does not uniformly increase prosocial... View Details
- October 2023 (Revised April 2024)
- Case
Accounting Red Flags or Red Herrings at Catalent? (A)
By: Joseph Pacelli, ZeSean Ali and Tom Quinn
Fund manager Janet Curie asked for a recommendation about the pharmaceutical company Catalent. The company seemed like a solid investment. However, a pair of research reports issued over the previous two months complicated this narrative. GlassHouse Research, a short... View Details
Keywords: Accounting Audits; Budgets and Budgeting; Earnings Management; Cost Accounting; Fair Value Accounting; Revenue Recognition; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Government Legislation; Conflict of Interests; Announcements; Blogs; Debates; Investment; Trust; Business and Shareholder Relations; Pharmaceutical Industry; Accounting Industry; United States
- 2023
- Book
Your True Moral Compass: Defining Reality, Responsibility, and Practicality in Your Leadership Moments
This book presents a new, powerful, and practical way of making final decisions on the hard, complex, uncertain problems of life and work. What if you have looked at the data, talked with trusted colleagues, and applied all the relevant managerial and ethical... View Details
- August 2023 (Revised December 2023)
- Case
Automating Morality: Ethics for Intelligent Machines
By: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr. and Tom Quinn
As autonomy became a more significant part of modern life – most notably in autonomous vehicles (AVs), such as Teslas – ethical debates about whether and how to impart ethics to machines heated up. Utilitarians pointed out that autonomous vehicles crashed much less... View Details
Keywords: Cost vs Benefits; Judgments; Fairness; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Disruptive Innovation; Technology Adoption; Risk and Uncertainty; Cognition and Thinking; Technological Innovation; Auto Industry; Technology Industry; Africa; Asia; Europe; North and Central America; Oceania; South America
- August 2023 (Revised March 2024)
- Case
Arla Foods: Data-Driven Decarbonization (A)
By: Michael Parzen, Michael W. Toffel, Susan Pinckney and Amram Migdal
The case describes Arla’s history, in particular its climate change mitigation efforts, and how it implemented a price incentive system to motivate individual farms to implement scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions mitigation measures and receive a higher milk price. The... View Details
Keywords: Dairy Industry; Business Earnings; Agribusiness; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Acquisition; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decision Making; Decisions; Voting; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Pollution; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Financial Strategy; Price; Profit; Revenue; Food; Geopolitical Units; Global Strategy; Ownership Type; Cooperative Ownership; Performance Efficiency; Performance Evaluation; Problems and Challenges; Natural Environment; Science-Based Business; Business Strategy; Commercialization; Cooperation; Corporate Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Europe; United Kingdom; European Union; Germany; Denmark; Sweden; Luxembourg; Belgium
- August 2023 (Revised January 2024)
- Supplement
Arla Foods: Data-Driven Decarbonization (B)
By: Michael Parzen, Michael W. Toffel, Susan Pinckney and Amram Migdal
The case describes Arla’s history, in particular its climate change mitigation efforts, and how it implemented a price incentive system to motivate individual farms to implement scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions mitigation measures and receive a higher milk price. The... View Details
Keywords: Dairy Industry; Earnings Management; Environmental Accounting; Animal-Based Agribusiness; Mergers and Acquisitions; Decisions; Voting; Climate Change; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Sustainability; Green Technology; Pollution; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Financial Strategy; Price; Profit; Revenue; Food; Geopolitical Units; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Global Strategy; Cooperative Ownership; Performance Efficiency; Performance Evaluation; Problems and Challenges; Natural Environment; Science-Based Business; Business Strategy; Commercial Banking; Cooperation; Corporate Strategy; Motivation and Incentives; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Europe; United Kingdom; European Union; Denmark; Sweden; Luxembourg; Belgium
- 2023
- Working Paper
The Politics of Philanthropy in China
By: Geoffrey Jones and Yuhai Wu
This working paper looks historically at business philanthropy in China. In the West, the literature has distinguished between entrepreneurial and customary philanthropy, while the phenomenon of spiritual philanthropy has been identified in many emerging markets. This... View Details
- March 2023
- Article
Developing Moral Muscle in a Literature-based Business Ethics Course
By: Inge M. Brokerhof, Sandra J. Sucher, P. Matthijs Bal, Frank Hakemulder, Paul G. W. Jansen and Omar N. Solinger
Moral subjectivity (e.g., reflexivity, perspective-taking) is a necessary condition for moral
development. However, widely used approaches to business ethics education, rooted in
conceptualizations of ethical development as objective and quantifiable, often neglect... View Details
- January 2023
- Case
Natura: Weathering the Pandemic at Brazil's Cosmetic Giant
By: Brian Trelstad, Pedro Levindo and Carla Larangeira
Brazil's Natura, a multi-brand cosmetics group, has taken several measures to safeguard the livelihoods of its thousands of employees and millions of sales representatives during the COVID-19 health and economic crisis. The company has also made strides in its efforts... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; ESG Reporting; Acquisition; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decision Making; Social Entrepreneurship; Environmental Sustainability; Environmental Management; Climate Change; Ethics; Moral Sensibility; Values and Beliefs; Global Strategy; Corporate Governance; Health Pandemics; Human Resources; Human Capital; Crisis Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing; Distribution Channels; Supply Chain; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Customer Ownership; Relationships; Business and Community Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Networks; Partners and Partnerships; Science-Based Business; Reputation; Human Needs; Social Issues; Strategy; Equality and Inequality; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Brazil; Latin America
- 2023
- Working Paper
'It Wouldn’t Have Mattered Anyway': When Overdetermined Outcomes Justify Our Sins
By: Stephanie C. Lin, Julian J. Zlatev and Dale T. Miller
We identify and document an “overdetermined outcome defense” which occurs when one learns
that circumstances besides one’s own actions were sufficient to produce a negative effect (e.g.,
deciding not to go to the gym, but later discovering that the gym had been... View Details