Business law and ethics

Dismayed by the State Department employees who peeked at Senator Barack Obama’s, Senator Hillary Clinton’s and John McCain’s passport files? Shocked by the nineteen employees, including physicians, who furtively glanced at Britney Spears’ medical files? Don’t be. Snooping isn’t rare. When I worked for CSO, a magazine devoted to executive-level security professionals, I heard countless […]

Innovation deserves protection.

Abuse. And it's not only a problem for Twitter.

Entrepreneurs sit on the sidelines for fear of innocently running afoul of the law.

When political and social issues touch business and the workplace, employees and their leaders sometimes struggle to address those issues productively...

Everyone in business should understand how financial success is measured and how they, individually, make an impact. A Fortune 100 company we work with held a two-day class recently to teach various mid-level managers the foundational elements of finance. The class focused on how to read financial statements and then, using their own public GAAP […]

A growing number of socially motivated entrepreneurs have been creating new kinds of organizations that combine a social mission with a business engine....

Police departments aren't the only ones considering it.

Editors’ Note: This fictionalized case study will appear in a forthcoming issue of Harvard Business Review, along with commentary from experts and readers. If you’d like your comment to be considered for publication, please be sure to include your full name, company or university affiliation and email address. The room was already packed when Liu […]

A look at the opportunities, risks, and mitigation strategies.

Don't ask your employees to check their faith at the door.

Your tech team can't be truly agile if HR, finance, and management aren't.

Prioritizing action over consideration often leads to unethical behavior.

Historically, it’s been a matter of trial and error. There’s a better way.

Two years after the financial crisis began, the business community and the broader public are still wrestling with two fundamental questions about capitalism that should help to orient and shape how we think about business ethics. Last week, I discussed the first of these questions: How much faith should we have in capitalism? This week, […]

The Presiding Bishop of the U.S.-based Episcopal Church speaks about love and unity in a time of deep division.

When Ben Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac and the words, “A little neglect may breed great mischief,” he did not have price fixing in mind. To the 47 executives in companies in the folding-box industry convicted of price fixing, however, the words seem tailored to fit. In those companies convicted under antitrust laws in 1976, […]

Is it the responsibility of schools to teach ethics? I think it is – but only if it’s done the right way. MBA Students don’t necessarily care about Kant’s third formulation of the categorical imperative — they need a simple values toolkit that they can understand and have at the ready, not an impression that […]

Advice for navigating a contentious climate.

A new series of experiments reveals that empathy tends to make marketers more egocentric.