Corporate social responsibility

By pooling the resources of the poor and by sharing information, religious and financial institutions can work together to change inner-city economies.

In my last post, I talked about the ways you can use green data — footprinting information on your products and services up and down the value chain — to create enormous value for your company. As they say, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. And those with the best information can cut costs, […]

A framework to help you understand the backlash and stay true to your values.

I recently returned from the Peter Drucker Global Forum Vienna, Austria, an event held as part of the centennial celebration of Peter Drucker’s birth. Having studied and written about Drucker extensively, spent years infusing his thinking into my own management consulting work, and befriended him late in his life, I take three messages from the […]

Why should that be a surprise?

Joe Ryan turned a small-town cosmetics company into a national powerhouse, making employees happy and shareholders rich in the process. Does it really matter that he cheats on his wife?

Most experienced negotiators are comfortable working out the terms of an economic contract--they bargain for the best price, haggle over equity splits,...

Eliminating algorithmic bias can unlock value for your company.

Startups typically operate with the mentality that growth and profit come first, higher calling comes second. This strategy, however, is misguided. Increasingly,...

In the wake of a series of gross corporate abuses around the turn of the century, Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley, which was intended to make corporate...

They care about society at large.

I have a colleague who cares passionately about the environment. She worries about global warming, supports policy to reduce carbon emissions, and is...

Neutrality is no longer a viable option.

The turmoil at OpenAI offers five lessons - and one dire warning.

Fresh from an erudite defense of "Just War" in his Nobel Lecture, President Obama will cap off a parade of American officials speaking at the Copenhagen...

On the anniversary of Lehman Brothers' fall, the question remains: What, if anything, has changed in the mentality of the financial community? While Wall...

Would it surprise you to learn that Starbucks is a leading advocate for action on climate change? Think about it. Starbucks’ success hinges on a robust coffee crop, which needs certain growing conditions. But the company is seeing the imprint of climate change on coffee growing regions around the world. Global rainfall and harvest patterns […]

The conversation at the Copenhagen climate conference is all about policy. But regulation won’t stop global warming by itself. Nor will simply spending money on clean technologies. In the US, President Obama has earmarked a half billion dollars of initial funding for a breathtaking array of renewable technologies. This looks like bold action, but it […]

As the 1990s overtake us, public interest in ethics is at a historic high. While the press calls attention to blatant derelictions on Wall Street, in the defense industry, and in the Pentagon, and to questionable activities in the White House, in the attorney general’s office, and in Congress, observers wonder whether our society is […]