Ethics

The US Post Office has been in financial trouble for years. As a governmental entity, it has reacted to those difficulties like most commercial enterprises: cut staff, and ask everyone to do more with less. Fewer mail carriers means longer days. Longer days means overtime. Overtime means larger deficits. How do you curb overtime? Give pay raises only to supervisors who keep...

Simply "having" a code of conduct will not mitigate risk on its own. It requires constant upkeep, fresh training and communication and regular updates. If your code is lonely, your organization may be exposed. The story is familiar: Organizations with a code of conduct suffer an embarrassing misconduct allegation or ethical lapse. As they pick up the pieces, they’re left...

Writing as “The Ethical Leader,” Yan Tougas draws on 15 years of experience as a compliance & ethics officer at a Fortune 500 company, sharing insights, wisdom and lessons learned. This post originally appeared on “The Ethical Leader” and is reprinted here with permission. Views expressed are that of the author. Visit him at YanTougas.com, connect with him on LinkedIn...

Trauma can lead a person to suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Or it can trigger post-traumatic growth. Companies, being made of people, can also experience both. The pandemic has been traumatic for many companies. What was its effect on the company you work for? How has it responded to the trauma? Are you bracing for PTSD, or are you poised...

As a senior member of the Wharton School faculty, I have noticed a new pattern emerging from discussions with students in my required MBA course on law, ethics and responsibility. More of them are telling stories about quitting their last jobs (including plum positions at some of the most prestigious firms in the world) to escape toxic bosses and work...

What is better than sending your teenager to a driving class? Also telling her what to do when she gets into a fender bender and gets a ticket. What’s better than that? Role-playing the incident two or three times until she gets it right. Similarly in the workplace, we should not only teach employees about rules and values, we should...

You’ve been asked to work on a project that will impact another function in your company (or more than one function). You could go at it alone but you know that those impacted will resent your lack of cooperation after you launch your project. A better approach is to ask them for feedback before you launch. The problem with this...

If you had access to a time machine today, would you want to go back to the workplace of the ’60s? What if you are a woman? Or Black? Or transgender? In a recent interview, Neil deGrasse Tyson said (at 1:52:00) that if you are an oppressed minority and can time travel, there is no time in the past that was better...

Your company opens a second office, hundreds of miles away from the original one, with a skeleton crew of ten employees. No room – and no need – in that new office for a finance person, or a lawyer, or an HR partner. But you know what that new office could use? A part-time ethics ambassador. One of these ten...

Many view workplace ethics as antithetical to the bottom line. This multinational manufacturer, however, says that the value of ethics can be enjoyed by shareholders and stakeholders alike. 

Good ethics is good business. Yonason Goldson, Director of Ethical Imperatives, LLC and self-proclaimed ethics ninja, works with leaders to create a culture of ethics that builds trust, sparks initiative and drives productivity. This whitepaper outlining the seven principles of ethical leadership is adapted from his book, "Grappling with the Gray: An Ethical Handbook for Personal Success and Business Prosperity."

You see your boss do something that appears unethical, but you are not sure. You are confused because your boss is a good person, one that you can’t imagine doing something wrong. How comfortable are you to discuss your concern with her? Now imagine that when you were interviewing for your current job two years ago, you asked your boss...