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End of Year Letter, 2018, from Jon Haidt and Azish Filabi
Stop the World—I Want to Get Off. The title of that 1960s musical captures a timeless sentiment, but it seems more common in recent years, and is perhaps especially on the minds of leaders of...
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How to Avoid Becoming the Next Wells Fargo
Last year, in September, CNN Business ran the headline, “The two-year Wells Fargo horror story just won’t end.” By now, many have heard how it all began: In 2016 it was revealed that the bank fired...
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New Evidence in Favor of Active Internal Whistleblowing
Over two decades ago, two of the largest corporate bankruptcies in U.S. history sprung up one after another—first Enron, then WorldCom—after the companies became mired in accounting and financial...
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Listen to Adam Grant Talk Leadership Science with Preet Bharara
It is safe to say that I am a podcast junkie. Whenever I find myself “ears-free”—while taking a shower, walking the dog, riding the subway—I listen to an episode. Usually it is intellectual...
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The Paradox of Employee Surveillance
This piece was originally published in Behavioral Scientist magazine.For many people, the global financial crisis eroded trust in corporations and government. There was a double-digit decline in trust...
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Wall Street and the Behavioral Science of Making Culture Ethical
Before he became “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Belfort, when he arrived in New York in the 1980s, was more like a starry-eyed sheep. That’s how Leonardo DiCaprio plays him in The Wolf of Wall...
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Socialism and Conflicts of Interest
There was a time in my life when I might have embraced the cause of socialism, but that was many years ago, and today I proudly march under the banner of centrism. And the current flirtation with...
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How to Make Lying at Your Company Normal
Earlier this month at the Beacon Theater, in New York City, Daniel Kahneman, famed author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, had a conversation with neuroscientist Sam Harris. It ranged over many of the...
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The Hidden Insights Evolution Has for Healthy Businesses
Charles Darwin ended The Origin of Species, his argument for evolution by natural selection, on a note of celebrated eloquence. “There is grandeur to this view of life,” he wrote, “with its several...
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Being a Parent as a Source of Ethics Risk
In 1973, in speaking to colleagues on the Cook County Democratic Committee, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago defended his having directed a million dollars of insurance business to an agency on behalf of...
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How the Stressful World of Science Can Be Healthier (and More Ethical)
Last month, Tim van der Zee, a Ph.D. student at the University of Leiden who studies ways to improve open online education, got a bit snarky. He didn’t take well to a recent news article from Science...
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Miss the 2019 Ethics by Design Conference? Watch It Online
Jon Haidt, in his closing remarks during our second Ethics by Design conference, wanted to share his overall takeaway, encapsulating a day’s worth of ideas on managing organizations in an era of...
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Mirage or Vision? Four Blind Spots at the Core of Theranos’ Failure
The parable of Elizabeth Holmes and her company, Theranos, is not an unfamiliar one. It involves a dream, a mission, a plan, a vision and quite possibly monumental corruption. It’s unclear whether...
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Is Creative Talent Critical to Ethical Systems Design?
In March, Ethical Systems hosted its second “Ethics by Design” conference. It showcased not just the expertise of top behavioral-science researchers and business practitioners, but also the...
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The Lawyer Who Wants to Transform Legal Ethics with Behavioral Science
Tigran Eldred started his career as an appellate lawyer, working on behalf of criminal defendants who had been convicted of serious offenses. This often meant he needed to investigate whether his...
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Ethics Bots and Other Ways to Move Your Code of Business Conduct Beyond Puffery
Eugene Soltes, a professor at Harvard Business School and an expert in why people commit fraud, gave a keynote speech at our recent Ethics by Design conference on how to engineer integrity in...
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The Case Against A.I. Controlling Our Moral Compass
Earlier this month, at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, I saw something, or someone, that would, on any other day, be out of place: a philosopher. Damon Horowitz—a philosopher at Columbia...
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“Superstore” and the Science of Pitching Social Change at Work
In an episode of NBC’s sitcom Superstore, Cheyenne, a teenage associate at a Walmart-like retail giant called Cloud-9, goes into labor on the store floor. Coworkers rush for medical supplies as...
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How This Acclaimed Entrepreneur Built an Honest Company from the Ground Up
As headlines barrage us with news of once-beloved companies turned crooked, I’ve wondered: Are the strongest ethical companies those that have embedded systems in their DNA that promote a culture of...
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Glassdoor Data Is Revealing the Link Between Culture and Good Business
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden elicited some playful teasing when, early in his presidential campaign, he rather quirkily took to quoting Immanuel Kant, the renowned German philosopher. In...
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