Publications

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Article

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black: Distancing Response to Ethical Dissonance

By: R. Barkan, S. Ayal, F. Gino and D. Ariely

Six studies demonstrate the "pot calling the kettle black" phenomenon whereby people are guilty of the very fault they identify in others. Recalling an undeniable ethical failure, people experience ethical dissonance between their moral values and their behavioral... View Details

Keywords: Ethical Dissonance; Cognitive Dissonance; Moral Judgment; Impression Management; Unethical Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Moral Sensibility; Cognition and Thinking; Research; Behavior; Judgments

July 1991 (Revised September 1992)
Background Note

Company's Ethical Climate

By: Joseph L. Badaracco

Explains what a company's ethical climate is, describes the forces that shape it, and ways managers can work to alter a firm's ethical climate. View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Business or Company Management; Value

Research Summary

Business Ethics

By: Joshua D. Margolis

Joshua Margolis is interested in how individuals can exercise leadership in the face of competing ethical and economic responsibilities, and how organizations can enable them to do that. In particular, how can managers and companies simultaneously advance... View Details

July 1993
Supplement

Ethics in Marketing

By: John A. Quelch

Compilation of commercials for six marketing case studies included in the book Ethics in Marketing by N. Smith and J.A. Quelch, published by Richard D. Irwin, Homewood, IL. View Details

Keywords: Marketing Communications; Advertising

October 2013
Article

License to Cheat: Voluntary Regulation and Ethical Behavior

By: F. Gino, E. Krupka and R. Weber

While monitoring and regulation can be used to combat socially costly unethical conduct, their intended targets are often able to avoid regulation or hide their behavior. This surrenders at least part of the effectiveness of regulatory policies to firms' and... View Details

Keywords: Ethical Behavior; Dishonesty; Regulation; Selection; Social Norms; Behavior; Ethics; Societal Protocols

Read Now

22 Feb 2011
News

On Behavioral Ethics

February 2011
Article

Bounded Ethicality in Negotiations

By: Max Bazerman

Routine and persistent acts of dishonesty prevail in everyday life, yet most people resist shining a critical moral light on their own behavior, thereby maintaining and oftentimes inflating images of themselves as moral individuals. We overview the psychology that... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Values and Beliefs; Strategy; Goals and Objectives; Reputation; Negotiation; Moral Sensibility

July–August 2014
Article

Becoming a First-Class Noticer: How to Spot and Prevent Ethical Failures in Your Organization

By: Max Bazerman

We'd like to think that no smart, upstanding manager would ever overlook or turn a blind eye to threats or wrongdoing that ultimately imperil his or her business. Yet it happens all the time. We fall prey to obstacles that obscure or drown out important signals that... View Details

Keywords: Accountability; Business Ethics; Cognitive Psychology; Human Behavior; Personal Ethics In Business; Business or Company Management; Ethics

24 May 2004
Research & Ideas

Becoming an Ethical Negotiator

The book What's Fair: Ethics of Negotiators is a rich collection of pointers from professional dealmakers, attorneys, academic specialists, and, not least, ethicists. Michael Wheeler, an HBS professor and editor of Negotiation Journal,... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

February 2019
Article

Bounded Ethicality and Ethical Fading in Negotiations: Understanding Unintended Unethical Behavior

By: McKenzie Rees, Ann E. Tenbrunsel and Max Bazerman

The business scandals in the past several decades led to the rising importance of ethics as a topic central to management scholarship. Behavioral scientists in particular were attracted to the topic in far greater numbers, and the study of ethical decision-making... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Behavior; Negotiation; Situation or Environment; Perception

05 May 2011
What Do You Think?

How Ethical Can We Be?

observing us. In a nutshell, those are the feelings of many respondents to this month's column. Frances Pratt summed up the comments of others in three words, "ethics is subjective." Ravindra Edirisooriya asked, for example, "Can humans be View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

2012
Case

Advanced Leadership Pathways: Shelly London and Ethics Education—'Strengthening Our Moral Compass'

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Anne Arlinghaus

Shelly London and Ethics Education — 'Strengthening Our Moral Compass' 2009 AL Fellow
Following a successful career as a Senior Vice President, Vice President, and Chief Communications Officer at two large corporate companies, Shelly London set out to promote... View Details

November 1983
Background Note

Ethical Frameworks for Management

Introduces managers and students of management to some of the basic categories and frameworks of philosophical ethics. Consists of five parts: l) Classifying ethical frameworks; 2) Teleological frameworks; 3) Deontological frameworks; 4) Mixed frameworks; and 5) from... View Details

Keywords: Management; Ethics

January 2010 (Revised December 2011)
Background Note

A Framework for Ethical Reasoning

By: Sandra J. Sucher and Nien-he Hsieh

A practical framework for evaluating the ethical dimensions of a proposed course of action for managers and executives. View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Ethics; Values and Beliefs; Framework; Corporate Accountability; Leadership

January 2019
Case

Accenture's Code of Business Ethics

By: Eugene Soltes

Leaders of Accenture’s compliance and ethics program are seeking to design a new code of business ethics for its global workforce of over 400,000 employees. The case explores the decision-making process that went into the design process and ultimately how they created... View Details

Keywords: Code Of Conduct; Compliance; Ethics; Law; Leadership; Governance Compliance

August 2020 (Revised December 2020)
Background Note

A Note on Ethical Analysis

By: Nien-hê Hsieh

To engage in ethical analysis is to answer such questions as “What is the right thing to do?” “What does it mean to be a good person?” “How should I live my life?” Ethical analysis, on its own, is often not adequate for doing the right thing or being a good... View Details

Keywords: Ethics; Framework; Decision Making; Prejudice and Bias