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McCombs School of Business

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We blog about current events, new books (and sometimes movies), and other happenings that have an ethical slant.

We also share on social media and encourage you to follow us @ethicsunwrapped. Links to our channels are in the footer of this (and every) page.

Thai Rescue: Difficult Decisions and Ethical Reasoning

Thai Rescue: Difficult Decisions and Ethical Reasoning

As I write this blog post, scuba divers are in the middle of a rescue effort to save twelve young soccer players and their coach from a flooded cave in Thailand.  Eight of the boys are out.  Four players and the coach remain to be saved.  The story has the world’s attention; it is terrifying, […]

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Elizabeth Holmes: Scamming Silicon Valley

Elizabeth Holmes: Scamming Silicon Valley

In 1996, I published an article in the Ohio State Law Library on “vaporware” in Silicon Valley.  Vaporware is the marketing ploy of preannouncing products that do not yet exist and may never come into existence in their described form.  This was a common marketing practice in Silicon Valley at the time, but it carried […]

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Doing the Crime, Not the Time

Doing the Crime, Not the Time

Recently a fired employee at my university, UT-Austin, was arrested and charged with six counts of tampering with government records (his time sheets) as law enforcement officials investigated him for fraud.  It appears that Jason Shoumaker often claimed pay for hours worked in his job as a facilities director at the University of Texas School […]

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Sinking in the Swamp

Sinking in the Swamp

There’s been a lot of talk about draining the swamp recently, but not a lot of swamp is getting drained.  According to our Ethics Defined video, “[c]orruption is the abuse of power or position for personal gain.”  In behavior that could not be swampier, Steve Cohen, the president’s “personal attorney,” has, according to Fox News […]

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The Cost of the Libor Lies

The Cost of the Libor Lies

I just finished reading The Spider Network by David Enrich.  It’s the story of the Libor-rigging scandal, by some people’s lights the biggest financial fraud in history.  Just to remind you, Libor is the London Interbank Offered Rate. Libor was supposedly being set by many participant banks sending to a central authority their cost of […]

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Business Ethics Makes the Business

Business Ethics Makes the Business

I recently finished reading Professor Francis J. Schweigert’s Business Ethics Education and the Pragmatic Pursuit of the Good (2016).  I commend this book to your attention. The book is an argument “that business schools should incorporate education for justice into their business and management curriculum as the pragmatic pursuit of the good.  This argument is […]

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Political Party Foul: Trump & Mueller Affiliates

Political Party Foul: Trump & Mueller Affiliates

The New York Times reported on Friday (1/26/18) that last June President Trump wanted to fire special counsel Robert Mueller but was thwarted when his attorney Don McGahn threatened to resign rather than carry out such an order.  Although the newspaper’s reporting on the so-called Russia investigation has generally been proved accurate, I do not […]

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Adding Meaning Equals Happiness

Adding Meaning Equals Happiness

Recently I have used this space to report on new and interesting books I had read and I do so again.  Although most of my blog posts are behavioral ethics-themed, because that is my key interest and most of our Ethics Unwrapped videos are related to behavioral ethics, I am ranging farther afield today to […]

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Cognitive Dissonance and the Case of the Unindicted Co-ejaculator

Cognitive Dissonance and the Case of the Unindicted Co-ejaculator

I just read a very scary book, Mark Godsey’s Blind Injustice: A Former Prosecutor Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Conviction (2017). I’ve written the script for an Ethics Unwrapped video on cognitive dissonance that we have not yet had an opportunity to film. However, the concept clearly has much to do with ethical […]

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Lessons from Wakey-Leaks

Lessons from Wakey-Leaks

My wife often tells people that there is nothing that I enjoy more than watching men argue with other men about sports. Therefore, I greatly enjoy ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” (PTI) with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. Both men are funny, passionate, and knowledgeable, though Kornheiser has the great misfortune of resembling me physically. On […]

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