New HEA report on “Creating Cultures of Integrity”
April 8, 2014
As part of responsible business week, the Higher Education Academy (HEA) this week published a report and series of case studies exploring the role of UK business schools in developing graduates with suitable tools to become strong ethical leaders of the future. One of these cases showcases some of the methods I used in the …
Responsible Business in 2020 – 10 forecasts for Responsible Business Week
March 31, 2014
After 20 years in the CSR game as a professional and academic, I find myself reflecting on a vexing paradox: we have more CSR than ever before, yet many of the challenges that CSR is supposed to be tackling are still getting worse, not better. Partly, I think this is because we tend to focus …
Doing the Business 2013 – We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks
November 12, 2013
Founded by the Australian ‘Internet Activist’ Julian Assange, Wikileaks (not affiliated with Wikipedia!) claims to bring “important news and information to the public” whilst ensuring that “journalists and whilstleblowers are not jailed for emailing sensitive or classified documents”. A safe haven for would-be corporate or government whistleblowers (e.g. US army private Manning) Wikileaks has been …
Are you a whistleblower?
I was invited to give an introduction to whistleblowing by the ICCSR before a screening of the film We Steal Secrets. I was keen to talk to people about the experience of whistleblowing from the Public Concern at Work (PCaW) perspective. PCaW is a UK based charity that provides advice to individuals who have witnessed …
Corporate Boycotts: no, I mean corporations doing the boycotting…
September 30, 2013
We are all too familiar with boycotts of corporations, principally by NGOs and trade unions. But there has been a recent flush of boycotts of corporations by corporations. Thus corporations appear to be behaving like NGOs by expressing their values – or the values which they think they should express – through the withdrawal of …
Twitter and Freedom from Fear
August 19, 2013
The use of Twitter to communicate bomb, death and rape threats, and engage in misogynistic speech, has been brought to the fore in recent weeks. This relates to a number of high profile cases in which prominent female figures – such as Labour MP Stella Creasy, the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, and the Guardian journalist …
Philanthropy for Business Ethics… down-under
June 3, 2013
… or ‘up-over’ depending on your perspective… It is a great honour to have been awarded the position of Gourlay Professor for Ethics in Business 2013, at Trinity College, University of Melbourne. This fellowship is a result of a very generous philanthropic endowment of John and Louise Gourlay[i] with the express intention of taking …
Our evening with Michael Woodford and Nuncy
March 13, 2013
This story really was extraordinary. Over 180 staff, students and business people listened intently to Michael as he recounted how, as newly appointed president of Olympus, he discovered and began to unpick an accounting fraud approaching $2 billion. Storytelling is clearly one of Michael’s talents, and the detailed tale and colourful descriptions and anecdotes provided …
“That’s the way we do things round here”
February 5, 2013
Thoughts on Business Ethics and Corporate Culture ‘Post- 9/11’, ‘post-Katrina’ and ‘post-Enron’. In a world defined by the passing of major catastrophes, there is an underlying optimism that such profoundly unsettling events also mark the beginning of something better, less horrific and morally progressive. Each new ‘post-’ seemingly galvanizes a collective urge for a …
Is it Ethics or Imagination we need most?
October 30, 2012
On Tuesday 6th November the tenth series of Doing the Business will begin with a screening of The Revenge of the Electric Car. The series is designed to encourage discussion and debate on the topic of social, environmental and ethical issues in business. Please join the debate live on Tuesday at Broadway, Nottingham or add your comments below. …
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