Under pressure to meet steep sales goals and incentives, Wells Fargo employees created over a million fraudulent accounts in their customers’ names.
Ethics Unwrapped Blog
Research Conflicts at UT Austin
University of Texas at Austin professor Chip Groat did not see a conflict of interest between his research on hydraulic fracturing and his payments from a Houston-based fracking company.
The Swamp: To Drain or Not To Drain
I don’t always agree with President-elect Donald Trump, but I concurred when he tweeted, in the wake of House Republicans’ secretive January 2, 2017 vote to gut the Independent Ethics Office: “With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as […]
Biases of a Supreme Court Justice
Justice Antonin Scalia will likely go down as one of the brightest minds, most forceful writers, and most colorful characters ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. In many ways, he was a “giant” of the Court, as many of his obituary writers are stressing. But Justice Scalia was also a poster child for […]
Ethical Leadership, Part 2: Best Practices
Psychological research provides guidance as to how leaders can create a workplace culture that encourages ethical behavior by employees.
Being Your Best Self, Part 2: Moral Decision Making
Moral decision making is the ability to produce a reasonable and defensible answer to an ethical question.
A Brief Guide to Behavioral Legal Ethics
Guest blogger Tigran Eldred is an Associate Professor of Law at the New England School of Law in Boston. He has a distinguished background as a public defender and civil rights lawyer before he joined academia. However, our particular interest in his contribution relates to his interest in behavioral ethics as it applies to the […]
Tools for Teaching Ethics
On a day (October 15, 2013) when the New York Times is carrying articles on former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s guilty pleas to attacks on women, on an indictment of a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old girl on felony charges in connection with the bullying-caused suicide of another 12-year-old girl, and on possible accounting irregularities […]
Intro to Behavioral Ethics
Behavioral Ethics investigates why people make the ethical (and unethical) decisions that they do in order to gain insights into how people can improve their ethical decision-making and behavior.
GVV Pillar 3: Normalization
Normalization means expecting values conflicts so that you approach them calmly and competently. Over-reaction can limit your choices unnecessarily.
In It To Win: Jack & Role Morality
Abramoff’s version of role morality, which is our tendency to use different moral standards as we play different “roles” in society.
In It To Win: Jack & Framing
Abramoff’s version of framing, which describes how our judgments, including our ethical judgments, are affected just by how a situation is posed or viewed.
In It To Win: The Jack Abramoff Story
Featuring former lobbyist and convicted felon Jack Abramoff, this 25-minute documentary explores the biases and pressures he faced, and the consequences of his unethical decisions.
Conflict of Interest
Conflict of interest arises when we have incentives that conflict with our professional duties and responsibilities in ways that cause harm to others and to society.
Incentive Gaming
Incentive gaming, or “gaming the system,” refers to when we figure out ways to increase our rewards for performance without actually improving our performance.
Boy Scouts, Gay Rights, and the In-group/Out-group Phenomenon
In teaching ethics, I focus upon helping people live up to their own standards rather than trying to talk them into accepting mine. None of our Ethics Unwrapped videos are aimed at foisting particular moral positions upon viewers. However, I am going on the record here as applauding the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to […]
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 […]