American Apparel and the Ethics of a Sexually Charged Workplace
The Week in Ethics
American Apparel and the Ethics of a Sexually Charged Workplace
Update October 1,2014: American Apparel has appointed a new interim CEO and CFO with turnaround and restructuring expertise in specialty retail. Update July 26, 2014: American Apparel appointed a new board without Dov Charney on it. He was ousted last month as CEO, see “American Apparel: Sex, Power and Terrible Corporate Governance.” Update: On March […]
read more »BYU’s Brandon Davies and the Ethics of Playing Through a Mistake
This week the dismissal of sophomore Brandon Davies from the third ranking college basketball team in the nation – Brigham Young University’s Cougars – for admitting he violated BYU’s honor code prohibiting premarital sex raises important questions about how we reconcile ourselves to living with high standards. While a study released yesterday by the National […]
read more »Dimitrios Biller and Toyota
When Dimitrios Biller, former National Managing Counsel of Toyota’s National Rollover Program, filed a lawsuit against Toyota in July 2009, he positioned himself as a whistleblower. Among other things, he accused Toyota of withholding and destroying product safety information. However, three things didn’t add up then. If Biller believed Toyota had committed fraud, why did […]
read more »McDonald’s Happy Meal Challenge
Update 12-4-2011: San Francisco’s law banning free toys with fast food for children that doesn’t meet nutritional standards (meals under 600 calories that include vegetables and fruit, with non-sugary drink) went into effect December 1, 2011. Critics charge that McDonald’s has circumvented the intent of the law by offering the free toys for $.10 with […]
read more »Sustainable Excellence
For a long time when the term “sustainability” was mentioned in connection with business, the examples most often cited were Ben & Jerry’s, The Body Shop, Patagonia and Stonyfield Farm. Their founders’ formula combined a successful business strategy with an agenda of doing good in the world. Gary Hirshberg said recently that he started Stonyfield […]
read more »The Ethics of Gratitude:Thanksgiving 2010
Thanksgiving is part of the fabric of American culture that celebrates how men and women survived the difficulty of change and new experiences, faced the limitations in their environment and created opportunities and relationships to survive and succeed. It is a tale of gratitude. Facing limitations and creating opportunities and relationships to survive and succeed […]
read more »The Ethics of Doing the Right Thing: What Cornell Could Teach Mark Hurd
Cornell University 70 years ago made a decision to do the right thing in a situation that is regularly cited as an example of consummate sportsmanship – an example that corporate leaders who’ve fallen on their own swords like Mark Hurd might benefit from revisiting. Closing in on a national football championship, Cornell’s team played […]
read more »The Role of Leaders in Toyota’s Rebuilding Trust
Update: December 27, 2012, Toyota agreed to a $1.1 billion settlement in lawsuits related to sudden acceleration. More than a year has passed since Toyota’s unintended acceleration problem became a crisis after a tragic accident forced the company to begin to address the issue publicly. Toyota has done a number of things to correct the problem […]
read more »The Inside Job and the Ethics of the 2008 Economic Crisis
The stuff of crises — arrogance, greed, unacknowledged conflicts of interest, unethical behavior, lack of transparency, failed leadership, and insufficient accountability – fueled “an industry out of control” according to Charles Ferguson’s documentary Inside Job which chronicles the 2008 economic meltdown. While of course we know the outcome of the unfolding events Ferguson describes, his […]
read more »The Ethics of Conscience
Lately in various places there has been a discussion about who is, or should be, the conscience of the company. A panel of public relations (PR) academics and practitioners discussed recently the merits of whether the PR function represented the company conscience. I remember a discussion several years ago between a PR vice president and […]
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