After passenger David Dao was forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight, many questioned why airline policies and procedures would allow such a violent deplaning.
Ethics Unwrapped Blog
Ethical Leadership, Part 1: Perilous at the Top
The moral example set by leaders has a major impact on the behavior of their subordinates, both good and bad. Despite career success, leaders are particularly vulnerable to ethical lapses.
Why Good Teachers Do Bad Things
Rachel Aviv’s article “Wrong Answer” in a recent New Yorker issue presents a textbook case of why good people do bad things. The article tells the story of the recent cheating scandal in the Atlanta School District, which was one of the worst of a string of school cheating scandals across the U.S. Forty-four of […]
Incentivizing the VA
Our Concepts Unwrapped video on Incentive Gaming, with content and narration provided by Professor Lamar Pierce of Washington University-St. Louis’s Olin School of Business, explains how many people will game incentive systems if given the opportunity. School teachers will teach to the test if they are rewarded based on how many of their students pass […]
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 […]
Helping Your Employees Be Their Best Selves
There is no single correct way to teach business ethics. A common approach combines philosophy and character development. Teachers impart philosophical concepts for resolving difficult ethical issues and encourage students to develop and hone strength of character to give them the means to actually implement the solutions that develop. Any regular reader of this blog […]
Moral Myopia
Moral myopia is a distortion of moral vision that keeps ethical issues from coming clearly into focus.
Moral Muteness
Moral muteness is when we communicate in ways that obscure our moral beliefs and commitments, or don’t voice moral sentiments at all.
Money, Money, Money! It Changes Everything…
Money is not the root of all evil, but it changes us in ways that are not always good. So, we should be careful about money if we wish to lead ethical lives. A number of recent studies have primed one group of subjects to think about money (by having them solve word puzzles that […]
Obedience to Authority
Obedience to authority describes our tendency to please authority figures. We may place too much emphasis on that goal and, consciously or subconsciously, subordinate the goal of acting ethically.
GVV Pillar 7: Reasons & Rationalizations
By anticipating the typical reasons & rationalizations given for ethically questionable behavior, you are able to identify and prepare well-reasoned responses.
GVV Pillar 2: Choice
Believe that you have a choice about voicing your values and know what has helped – and hindered you – in the past so you can work around these factors.
Bounded Ethicality
Bounded ethicality explains how predictable organizational pressures and psychological processes cause us to engage in ethically questionable behavior that is inconsistent with our own values and preferences.
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.
Conformity Bias
Conformity bias refers to our tendency to take cues for proper behavior in most contexts from the actions of others rather than exercise our own independent judgment.
Role Morality
Role morality is the tendency we have to use different moral standards for the different roles we play in society.
My Group Versus Your Group
It seems obvious that people should judge the ethicality of others’ actions in an objective and fair way. What is not so obvious is how difficult it often is to do that. One reason why it is difficult to make such objective judgments is our tendency to sort ourselves and others into groups and to […]