Business Ethics

Money and the Meaning of Life

Posted on Harvard Business Review: May 17, 2011 8:00 AM Everywhere you look, there's compelling evidence that the single-minded pursuit of wealth often leads smart ...

February 4, 2011

In Accusing Microsoft, Google Doth Protest Too Much

Posted on Harvard Business Review: February 3, 2011 2:47 PM Google has sparked a media uproar by alleging that Bing "copies" Google results. Bing unequivocally denied ...

December 14, 2010

Four Strategic Generosity Lessons

Posted on Harvard Business Review: December 13, 2010 11:33 AM On December 9, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined Microsoft founder Bill Gates and wealthy investor ...

December 10, 2010

How WikiLeaks Matters

Posted on Harvard Business Review: December 8, 2010 12:06 PM Rather than seeing WikiLeaks through the lens of morality or national security, let's look at it through ...

October 29, 2010

Green Marketers Are Still Sinning

Posted on Harvard Business Review: October 28, 2010 11:54 AM The green marketing research firm Terrachoice released its annual "Sins of Greenwashing" study on Tuesday....

June 22, 2010

Power Lessons, Courtesy of Samsung

Posted on Harvard Business Review: June 21, 2010 3:20 PM Samsung's Lee Kun-hee was in power, then out of power, and is now in power again. And that's not making life ...

April 20, 2010

Regulators: Correct the Error or the Cover-up?

Posted on Harvard Business Review: April 19, 2010 5:04 PM The outrage over the Upper Branch Mine Disaster in West Virginia is profound even almost two weeks after the ...

October 20, 2009

Kiva's Cautionary Social-Entrepreneurship Tale

Posted on Conversation Starter: October 19, 2009 4:41 PM For the past few years, Kiva, the person-to-person microlending site, has been held up as something of a ...

September 4, 2009

The Ethics of Multitasking

I'll never forget how great I thought it was when I first discovered multitasking on my computer. Suddenly it was possible to switch between tasks seamlessly; with ...

July 17, 2009

Why I Don't Want the Recession to End Yet

Everyone is asking the same questions: Have we hit bottom yet? When will the recession end? When will things go back to the way they were? As a chief executive, I'm as...

July 14, 2009

Wal-Mart Brazil Thinks Green

Posted on Green Advantage: July 13, 2009 10:56 AM In the last month, what event had the greatest potential for changing business as usual forever? If you said the ...

June 12, 2009

A TRIP We Should All Take

At first glance, money management giant Mellon Bank Corp. (now the Bank of New York Mellon (BK)), the British alternative rock band Radiohead, and my company, LRN, ...

June 9, 2009

The Worst Business Model

Learn from outrageous, harmful business ideas like Wonga payday loans. Umair Haque explains it all.

May 19, 2009

Memo to the Class of '09

To: Business School Graduates, Class of 2009From: The Ethics Guy at BusinessWeek.comRe: Your Future Congratulations! Your hard work and persistence have paid off, and ...

March 20, 2009

Wall Street's Economic Crimes Against Humanity

The financiers at AIG were awarded millions in bonuses because their contracts were based on the transactions they completed, not the consequences of those ...

March 13, 2009

We Need an Ethics Czar to Battle a Widespread Breakdown in Standards

Energy Czar. Health Reform Czar. Technology Czar. Green Czar. President Barack Obama continues to line up an impressive array of policy leaders to tackle our ...

January 30, 2009

Are You a Good Leader?

"Never underestimate the other guy's greed." This isn't just a classic line from the 1983 Brian De Palma film, Scarface (written by Oliver Stone). It also reflects the...

December 23, 2008

A Time for Ethical Self-Assessment

This may be the season of giving, but it sure feels like everybody is suddenly on the take. Siemens (SI), the German engineering giant, agreed this month to pay a ...

December 16, 2008

The Madness of Crowds, Past and Present

A few weeks ago I was interviewing a very successful CEO. Despite dismal economic news around the world, his business was experiencing record profits. I thought, "It ...

November 4, 2008

A Code of Ethics for President-Elect Obama

The most heated, high-stakes, and divisive Presidential election in recent memory is now over, and on Jan. 20, 2009, the U.S. will welcome Barack Obama as our next ...