Ethikos Weekly Editor’s Picks – July 30, 2014

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Editor’s Top Choice:

Defining an “Ethical” Leader
From Michael Volkov of Corruption, Crime & Compliance:

The most effective ethics and compliance program starts with a CEO.  But that is not the end of the story.  Life is easier with a CEO who understands the importance of ethics and compliance, promotes it as a financial driver for profitability and sustainability, and protects a company’s ethical reputation.

Some CEOs are committed to this; some are not.  Successful CEOs share a number of common traits.  CEOs committed to ethics and compliance are not guaranteed financial success.  Ethical CEOs can fail, and many times do.  But one thing is for sure – an ethical CEO will never fail because of a compliance issue.  You will never see a systemic breakdown in an ethics and compliance program in a company where the CEO is committed to ethics and compliance.Read more


Other Featured Picks of the Week

Business Ethics Professor Challenges Current Corporate Culture
From Kansas State University:

Society often benefits when tattling overcomes turning a blind eye, according to a Kansas State University business ethics professor.

Diane Swanson, Edgerley family chair of distinction in business administration and professor of management, said although whistleblowers may be shunned and discredited, they can help corporations remain ethical and uncover dangers to consumers.

“It is hard to pierce the corporate veil because typically the only proof we have are public statements and court cases,” Swanson said. “It is difficult to know the actual decision parameters. That’s why we count on whistleblowers.” Read more


Morning People Are More Likely to Lie to Their Bosses in the Afternoon

Joe Pinsker of The Atlantic, “There are morning people and there are evening people; there is ethical behavior and there is unethical behavior. That much we know, and previous attempts to suss out how those categories overlap with each other pointed researchers toward what’s called the ‘morning morality effect.’ The effect, written up in a study last year, suggests that people behave more ethically earlier in the day, the theoretical underpinning being that as a person grows drained from the day’s mounting obligations, they lose the wherewithal required to behave in a saintly manner.

This seems plausible enough, but another group of researchers wondered if the morning morality effect might overlook an element of existing sleep research: that people have specific ‘chronotypes,’ meaning they’re predisposed to feeling alert at different times of day. (One’s chronotype can change over the course of a lifetime.) The morning morality effect, they figured, doesn’t account for the portion of the population—roughly 40 percent—whose vitality blooms in the evening. These researchers conducted a study, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, that found that an evening person is roughly three times as likely to behave unethically in the morning than a morning person.” Read more


10 Things You’re Doing at Work that Say, “I Don’t Care”
From Stephanie Vozza, of Fast Company, “We’ve all been at a restaurant where the waiter forgets your special request and looks as though he’d rather be just about anywhere else in that moment. Then there’s the grocery store clerk who avoids eye contact and is annoyed with your coupons. Clearly these people don’t care, but is it possible we’re sending similar signals at work without realizing it?

‘These days, we’re all so busy and just getting through the day can feel like enough,’ says Jon Gordon, author of The Carpenter (Wiley, 2014). ‘But anytime you’re stressed, you’re acting out of survival. Even the most well-meaning among us will come across as not caring.’” Read more


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