articles 1 to 10 of 47
Hedging Their Bets: How Hedge Funds Can Curb Critics and Avoid Regulation
Hedge fund managers oversee $1.9 trillion in assets, but no one knows what they invest in or even what those assets are actually worth. That's because hedge funds are not regulated and consequently aren't required to make the same detailed financial disclosures that are required of publicly traded companies. The combination of potentially huge financial rewards and lack of transparency may foster ethical lapses, Wharton professor Thomas Donaldson noted during a recent talk on hedge fund ethics. His solution? An approach he calls a "microsocial contract."
From: November 12, 2008
Bad Business: Why Companies Shouldn't Trade with Abusive Regimes
Is selling police equipment to a notoriously brutal government tantamount to assisting in torture? William Schulz believes that it can be, and that these types of sales are one of the principal ways in which businesses find themselves tangled up with torturers. During a presentation sponsored by Wharton's Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research, Schulz, former executive director of Amnesty International and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, spoke about the challenges that companies face doing business with repressive governments.
From: April 30, 2008
In the Game of Business, Playing Fair Can Actually Lead to Greater Profits
Tune into "The Apprentice," and you get an all-too-common view of business. Every week, the contestants try to impress Donald Trump by preening, cajoling and conniving. In this world, toughness is the measure of every CEO, and the boss glories in firing people and squeezing every penny out of suppliers. Yet according to John Zhang and Jagmohan Raju, both Wharton marketing professors, and Tony Haitao Cui from the University of Minnesota, many people aren't purely mercenary in their business dealings. They care about fairness -- and they should, the researchers say, because doing so can maximize their profits.
From: March 13, 2008
Are Overconfident Executives More Inclined to Commit Fraud?
No one makes it to the top ranks of corporate management without a healthy amount of self-assurance. Confidence underlies decisive, strong leadership, but does overconfidence lead managers to cross the line and commit fraud? New research by Wharton accounting professor Catherine M. Schrand and doctoral student Sarah L. C. Zechman examines patterns in frauds to determine if some frauds evolve, not out of pure self-interest, but because executives are overly optimistic that they can turn their firms around before fraudulent behavior catches up with them. Their paper is titled, "Executive Overconfidence and the Slippery Slope to Fraud."
From: March 05, 2008
Baseball, Steroids and Business Ethics: How Breaches of Trust Can Change the Game
When former Senator George Mitchell finally released his report on performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball last December, many of its conclusions came as no surprise to baseball fans, most of whom had heard the allegations of steroid use for years. With fans aware of such egregious behavior, why has attendance at games continued to climb? Are baseball's "consumers" impervious to ethical lapses? No, say Wharton professors, but the case demonstrates how bias, competition and a lack of oversight can work together to create an ethically toxic atmosphere -- in any field.
From: February 20, 2008
What Hewlett-Packard's Spying Scandal Tells Us about the Limitations of Corporate Boards
The crisis at Hewlett-Packard over allegations that its chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, authorized illegal surveillance of HP board members in order to find out who leaked sensitive company information to the press, is dragging on, perhaps longer than most people first expected. And it has raised a number of important issues about corporate governance, privacy protection and surveillance of employees. Tom Donaldson, professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, joins Knowledge@Wharton to talk about HP's woes as they relate to business practices both in the U.S. and abroad. Donaldson's research areas include business ethics, leadership, risk management and corporate compliance. He has consulted with companies ranging from Goldman Sachs and Wachovia to Exelon and KPMG, and is currently working on articles about corporate risk management programs and cash management practices at non-profit organizations.
From: October 18, 2006
The Billion-Dollar Body Parts Industry: Medical Research alongside Greed and Corruption
Body parts are big business in the United States. Tissue, organs, tendons, bones, joints, limbs, hands, feet, torsos, and heads culled from the dead are the cornerstones of the lucrative and important business of advancing scientific knowledge and improving medical technique. Few people, however, think to ask where the material that sustains this enormous industry comes from. Journalist Annie Cheney is a timely exception. In Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains (Broadway), Cheney chronicles her quest to find out how human remains are procured, processed, marketed, and used. It's a complicated, detailed and disturbing tale.
From: August 09, 2006
Podcast: Thomas Dunfee on the Enron Verdict
On May 25, a federal jury convicted former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay and former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling on conspiracy and fraud charges, with sentencing to be decided on September 11. As has been repeatedly noted in press coverage of this trial, Enron is the incredible story of a once powerful company done in by a group of top executives whose greed and fraud was breathtaking even by post dot-com standards. But it is by no means the only high-profile criminal trial in recent days, nor is it likely to be the last case brought by the government against CEOs who abuse their positions, their stockholders, their employees and the public trust. Thomas Dunfee, chairman of Wharton's legal studies and business ethics department, and an expert on social contracts and the social responsibility of business, talked to Knowledge@Wharton's Mukul Pandya and Robbie Shell about the Enron verdict.
From: May 31, 2006
Linking Strong Moral Principles to Business Success
In Moral Intelligence: Enhancing Business Performance & Leadership Success, Doug Lennick and Fred Kiel look at the connection between strong moral principles and business success. Using original research, the authors show how the best performing companies have leaders who are able to promote moral intelligence throughout their organizations, despite the fact that the business world all too often rewards bad behavior, at least in the short run. Included in their book is what the authors call their Moral Competency Inventory, a metric that can help leaders assess where they and their organization currently stand.
From: November 21, 2005
Winners Never Cheat: Lessons for Today's Business Leaders
In 1970, Jon M. Huntsman started a small entrepreneurial firm with his brother. By 2000, Huntsman Corp. had grown to become the largest privately held petrochemical and plastics business in the world. Today, Huntsman is a billionaire philanthropist who recently donated $225 million to establish the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah. He has also contributed millions to help rebuild the country of Armenia, and supported organizations that feed the poor, house the homeless and protect victims of domestic violence. In his new book, Winners Never Cheat: Everyday Values We Learned as Children (But May Have Forgotten) (Wharton School Publishing), Huntsman offers a "moral compass" for business leaders and others to live by that is based on his own experiences.
From: June 01, 2005
