Is S&P the next Enron? In a recent New York Times column, Floyd Norris noted in detail the obvious similarities between the downfall of Arthur Andersen during the Enron debacle and the recent troubles of Standard & Poor’s and other credit rating agencies (CRAs). Arthur Andersen was in an inherent conflict-of-interest situation. Like all auditors, it was paid by its […] View
Revenge Porn Sites In teaching ethics in a business school, I typically focus upon decision making errors that well-intentioned people make. I do so because I believe that most of my students do have good intentions, as do most people in business. They want to have careers that they can be proud of. But even people of good […] View
Ethics in Politics The inability of Congress and the President to work together to avoid the “fiscal cliff” until well after their failure to do so had caused real damage to the American economy highlights a deeply troubling problem in the U.S. democratic system. It is tempting to put all the blame on politicians for America’s bitter ideological […] View
Conscious Capitalism Most of my blogs have addressed individual ethical decision making with particular attention paid to behavioral ethics. This is natural, because Ethics Unwrapped ’s initial videos have largely concerned these new concepts. However, the ethical decision making and actions of business entities are also very important. In most business ethics courses, the topic of corporate […] View
Back to the Movies—Les Miz In my previous Ethics Unwrapped blog post, I noted that in Steven Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln,” President Lincoln is portrayed as have taken a utilitarian ends-justify-the-means approach to securing passage of the Thirteen Amendment in order to end slavery. Rather than follow a deontological, rule-based “thou shalt not lie” approach, Lincoln is willing to tolerate lying […] View
Lincoln the Movie There are two primary means of resolving ethical dilemmas. The deontological approach is rules-based–don’t lie, don’t steal, keep your promises, etc. Then there’s the teleological or utilitarian approach, which judges the morality of competing approaches by their consequences (“greatest good for the greatest number”). Both approaches are respectable. They often lead to the same conclusion […] View
How Will You Choose? When Lance Armstrong realized that nearly every winning cyclist in major cycling was doping and that he would have to start doping to beat them, he started doping. When Mark McGuire realized that scores of top home run hitters in the major leagues were doping and that he would have to dope to stay among […] View
David Petraeus’s Leadership Lessons At this writing, several military figures are very much in the news in ways that they regret, including former CIA Director David Petraeus, General John Allen, Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair, and General William Ward. The first three are caught up in sex scandals; General Ward’s problem was being more than a little loose with taxpayer […] View
Welcome to our blog… Welcome to the first blog post on the Ethics Unwrapped website. We at the McCombs School of Business hope the videos that we have posted and will post in the future on this website will be a valuable (and FREE!!!!!!!!) resource for all people wishing to teach ethics or to learn about ethics on their […] View