The Wirecard Fraud and Networks of the Oblivious Unfortunately, if you have an ethics blog you never run out of subjects to write about. Business scandals are especially plentiful. We’ve addressed, among others, the scandals at Boeing, Volkswagen, Ozy Media, McKinsey, WeWork, Robinhood, and Theranos. We haven’t yet addressed in any detail Sam Bankman-Fried and the FX scandal, Charlie Javice’s Frank fraud, Ruja […] View
Implicit Bias and “Knocking While Black” “Implicit bias” exists when we unconsciously hold attitudes towards others or associate stereotypes with them. (See our video: Implicit Bias) This is a controversial topic, but the evidence for the existence of implicit bias, both in the lab and in real life, keeps stacking up. There is substantial support for many forms of implicit bias, […] View
Ozy Media: Another “Fake It Until You Make It” Start-up Doesn’t Make It We’re getting just a little weary of writing “Start-ups Gone Bad” blog posts. The list is already substantial. We’ve profiled Theranos, of course. More than once, in fact. And then there’s WeWork, Robinhood, and the Fyre Festival. We’ve even written a more general blog post entitled “Lies and the Lying Entrepreneurs Who Tell Them”. This […] View
That’s Awesome! Why Awe-Inspiring Acts Inspire Moral Behavior Why do good people do bad things? Often, they are nudged on by the conformity bias. People have evolved to tend to take their cues as to how to dress, what to eat, and how to act from those around them, particularly in their in-group. Even people’s moral actions and judgments are heavily influenced by […] View
The Ethics of Complicity Hillary Clinton wrote that it “takes a village” to raise a child. It’s not a one-person job. Few things are, including financial and political frauds, sexual harassment, and war crimes. Both the legal system and ethical analysis tend to focus on the actual perpetrators of wrongdoing, but often they are not the only ones who […] View
Alexander Butterfield’s Lessons for Cassidy Hutchinson and for Us The conformity bias is the tendency we all have to take our cues from those around us as to how to dress, what music to listen to, and, as it happens, what moral decisions to make. If we are lucky enough to be with people who generally try to do the right thing, then we […] View
Moral Decision Making and Construal Level Theory (CLT) Although Ethics Unwrapped features videos, case studies, teaching notes and much more on many ethics-related topics, behavioral ethics—the science of moral decision making—gets most of our attention. Frequently, we focus on the question: “Why do good people often do bad things?” As with everything related to the brain, there is neither a simple answer nor […] View
The Key Man: Fraud and Its Supporting Cast In our last post, “Impact Investing and the Damage Done by The Key Man,” we explored Simon Clark & Will Louch’s book (The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale) detailing Arif Naqvi’s billion-dollar fraud in the impact investing space. A billion dollars is a […] View
Impact Investing and the Damage Done by “The Key Man” We all tend to see what we wish to see and to believe what coincides with our pre-existing viewpoints. We at Ethics Unwrapped hope that impact investing can live up to its promise of helping to solve many of the world’s problems. We are kindly disposed to the practice, and think well of individuals engaged […] View
Moral Injury: When McKinsey Comes to Town Moral injury has been defined by Drs. Brett Litz and Bill Nash as “[t]he lasting psychological, biological, spiritual, and social impact of perpetrating, failing to prevent, or bearing witness to acts that can transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.” It is a phenomenon strongly identified with military experience, but goes beyond that. Moral injury […] View