Trump, the Coup, and Corporate Ethics

trump

Corporate America might be hoping that the difficult issues raised by President Trump’s attempted coup this week and the remaining days of his term will somehow pass them by. Too bad.  What Trump has unleashed isn’t something businesses will be able to avoid. In several practical ways, dealing with Trump and his minions — both…

Read More

Ethics and Employee Surveillance

surveillance

We have an interesting bit of research for compliance officers’ consideration today, exploring how companies can implement surveillance of employees working from home in a useful manner. Taking an ethical approach to the endeavor seems to be a key ingredient for success.  The findings were reported in the MIT Sloan Management Review last week. Researchers…

Read More

Two Tales of Ham-Fisted Leadership

leadership

One might assume that the leadership challenges facing Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and Roger Goodell at the National Football League don’t have much in common — but when talking about inept leadership in modern times, some universal truths do indeed emerge. First, let’s recap each man’s leadership bungles individually. We’ll start with Zuckerberg. The spark…

Read More

Wells Fargo, Part II: Leadership Fails

leadership

Today we continue to examine the misconduct at Wells Fargo by examining the failures of leadership that allowed its unauthorized accounts scandal to happen. After all, poor leadership is the sort of dysfunction that could happen at any company, so what happened here is important to understand. In our first post about Wells Fargo earlier…

Read More

2020 World’s Most Ethical Announced

Most Ethical

Ethisphere announced its 2020 list of World’s Most Ethical Companies today, and corporate ethics and compliance officers know what that means: a barrage of emails from the CEO and board asking, “Why aren’t WE on that list???” This year Ethisphere honored 131 companies from 21 countries and across 52 industries. We can’t name all 131…

Read More

On the Importance of Ethics and Leadership

ethical dilemmas

Several weeks ago we had a post about the ethical missteps at Boeing, where I heaped lots of blame on now-fired CEO Dennis Muilenberg. That post generated many comments on LinkedIn, including a few that speculated: were these problems really due to Muilenberg, or was he undermined by subordinates who didn’t want him at Boeing?…

Read More

More Misadventures in Ethics From Boeing

boeing

Boeing’s risk management failures with its 737 MAX jet turned out to be the biggest cautionary tale of corporate governance in 2019. Now we have one more glimpse into those executive misjudgments courtesy of the New York Times. The Times published yet another in-depth article about Boeing’s troubles on Sunday, this time starting with a…

Read More

What the Shootings Mean for Ethics & Compliance

This week Tom Fox and I dedicated our usual Compliance Into the Weeds podcast to the ethics and compliance implications of the mass shootings that happened in El Paso and Dayton last weekend. Nobody relishes analyzing something so painful for so many — but corporations are foolish to ignore what’s happening in this country, and…

Read More

More on Boeing and Business Ethics

boeing

The more you consider Boeing’s mishandling of its trouble with the 737 MAX jet, the more lessons ethics and compliance professionals can tease out. This weekend I spent time pondering what Boeing’s decisions about safety software for the MAX say about the company’s supposed commitment to an ethical corporate culture. That led to this small…

Read More

Ethics Lessons in Trump Tweets

Trump

Occasionally President Trump raises some thought-provoking points for ethics and compliance officers. Not the usual stupid stuff showcasing the ethical decay of the Trump Administration, mind you — but rather, genuinely relevant issues about corporate ethics and compliance programs, that don’t always have clear answers. Trump did that twice this week, which is two times…

Read More