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HOW DO SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES PREPARE STUDENTS TO MEET FUTURE BUSINESS NEEDS?

This article was first published by the French Chamber of Great Britain (link) That was the question posed by Philippe Chalon, Chair of the Chamber’s Economic Updates, to Peter Todd, Dean of HEC Paris and Susan Liautaud, Vice Chair of Council and Court of Governors of the London School of Economics & Political Science on the premise that education is key for the competitiveness of nations (more…)

Mining Ethics Lessons from Leadership Research… and Miners

Iterative Ethics This blog is the first of a series of eight blogs I will write extracting ethics lessons from research and stories that are not at the start ethics-related. It is part of a deliberate effort at synthetic organizational thinking at SLAL, tying together cross-sector organizational matters to derive learning directly and indirectly relevant to ethics. The messages are gleaned from business, non-profit, and governmental organizations, and the ethics applies to all. In a recent Harvard Business Review article entitled “Leadership Lessons from the Chilean Mining Rescue,” Harvard Business School professors Amy C. Edmondson and Herman B. Leonard, and...

Untangling the Confusion Over Organizational Ethics

This article was first published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Summer 2013).  A wave of ethics transgressions underlines the importance of comprehensive ethics oversight for organizational success. Last year, 2012, was in many regards a step forward for proponents of ethical action. Roger Gifford, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, one of the world’s financial capitals, declared business ethics a priority and critical to the City’s economic success. François Hollande published a Code of Ethics within 11 days of becoming president of France. And the new Chinese premier, Xi Jinping, highlighted the ongoing danger of corruption to economic and social development as a central part...

It’s Not About Perfection

Perfection is not possible … imperfection is not an excuse The recently updated guidelines to the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices entitled A Resource Guide to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (November 2012) offers myriad helpful principles, case studies, and clarifications to facilitate compliance and proactive engagement with the authorities on various issues potentially covered by the FCPA. However, perhaps the most useful and reassuring guiding principle appears late in the document in Chapter 5 “Guiding Principles of Enforcement”: neither the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) nor the Department of Justice (DOJ) seek perfection. Nor should you. (more…)