Chapter 1
Not as much why or should; it’s which values and how?
Who decides right vs. wrong?
Being ethical creates trust, loyalty, commitment, creativity, and initiative
It leads to problem avoidance, cost containment, improved constituency relationships, enhanced work
life, increased competitiveness
List of “why be ethical” on p. 32
Spectrum of freedom, law, ethics
Vocabulary
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Stakeholders
Normative ethics vs. descriptive ethics
Values: underlying beliefs that cause us to act or to decide one way rather than another
Ethics: how human beings should properly live their lives
Ethical values
Corporate Culture: what is normal about how we behave in the company
Organizational risk assessment
Responsible decision-making (personal and organizational) because it will result in more responsible
behavior
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Connection between knowledge and behavior
Manage the ethical behavior of others
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Business leaders have a responsibility for the business environments they create
Skill of ethical business leadership: to create the circumstances within which good people are
able to do good and bad people are prevented from doing bad
LSP’s Reading Figure 1.1 (p.31)
Titanic puzzle: less-expensive but faulty or potentially harmful products
Chapter 2
What makes a decision involve ethics? (p.77)
Businesspeople causing focusing failures / inattentional blindness to prevent you from factoring ethics
into the decision
Normative myopia
Change blindness
Bounded ethicality (part of the team at work, pleasing the boss)
7-step decision-making model
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Identify the facts
Identify the ethical issues
Identify the stakeholders
Consider available alternatives: moral imagination
Compare and weigh the alternatives
a. Rawls justice: walk a mile in their shoes
b. Predict the likely, foreseeable, and possible consequences; seek to create benefit and
mitigate, minimize, or compensate for harm
c. Are any principles, rights, and duties involved?
d. What of your integrity, virtue, and character?
6. Make a decision and act on it
7. Monitor and learn from the outcomes
Stumbling blocks to Ethical Decision-making
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Cognitive or intellectual
o Consider limited alternatives
o Simplified decision rules: finders keepers, losers weepers
o Minimum decision criteria: satisficing
Easier to do the wrong thing
Lack the courage to do the right thing: go with the flow
o Culture of intimidation or fear
o Peer pressure
Parable of the Sadhu
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High adrenaline flow
Superordinate goal
Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
The value of a process for identifying and responding to ethics issues
When Good People Do Bad Things at Work
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Scripts (keep people out of highly repetitive situations)
Distractions (motivating or requiring employees to be focused and driven)
Moral exclusion (Eisai Pharma. = moral inclusion)
Chapter 3
Ethical relativism
1. Utilitarianism / consequences: maximize the overall happiness
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Problems
o How to measure consequences
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No principles (e.g., allowed slavery)
The Child labor discussion
Ultimate goal of ethics: impartial promotion of human well-being
2. Principles/Rights
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Rules/Principles create ethical duties
Legal, organizational, role-based, professional
Categorical imperative
justice: equality of outcome vs. of opportunity
3. Virtue: who a person is
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How are character traits formed and conditioned? In the workplace?
Feinberg and executive compensation (p.129)
Ruggie’s Guiding Principles: Protect, Respect, and Remedy
Extraterritorial jurisdiction
Safe harbor
Chapter 4
Corporate culture (e.g., like an iceberg regarding movement and change)
Heskett, Sasser, and Wheeler: strong, adaptive cultures (list of 10)
Toyota: how culture can be positive and how it can be negative
The effect of workplace culture on decision-making
Compliance-based cultures vs. values-based cultures
HOW to create a culture of ethics
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Role of leadership (e.g., role model—visible ethical action, connecting ethical behavior to
success)
Ethics officer
Dedication of resources
Integration
Assessment
Monitoring
Determine its mission
Vision
Code of Conduct
Processes and procedures
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Ethics hotlines (should be called a “helpline”)
Incentives
So much more
Ethical, effective leader vs. effective leader (methods and ends/objectives)
Key elements of successful codes
Whistleblowing: how the organization can have an effective systems of internal reporting
USSC guidelines (FSGO)
 Mitigated penalty vs. aggravated penalty
 The seven steps
 The 2010 amendments
Credo is about personal responsibility
96.6% make whistleblowing a duty of employment
Confidentiality vs. anonymity