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Personal Ethics
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Friday, April 13th, 2012For the past few weeks, I’ve dedicated my Friday posts to examining questions of social ethics. The questions of why we do the things we do, favor some people over others, and tolerate (or even encourage) some kinds of inequities strike me as more vital than ever at a time when our society seems [...]
Was it ethical to give Dick Cheney a new heart?
Monday, April 2nd, 2012This may not strictly qualify as “business,” but the ethical questions surrounding former Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent heart transplant strike me as interesting enough to warrant some exploration. If you’ve been living in Antarctica, you may have missed news reports that Vice President Cheney, whose heart troubles have been well-documented, recently received a [...]
What should we learn from Mega Millions madness?
Friday, March 30th, 2012The biggest lottery prize in history is up for grabs today, and the excitement is growing out of control. The pot has swelled to an astonishing $640 million, up $100 million from Tuesday when the drawing failed - again - to produce a winner. Americans are lining up everywhere for a chance to [...]
Check out conscious capitalism!
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012One of my favorite ways to get inspiration for this blog is to wander around online, exploring the meandering information pathways of the Internet until something strikes my fancy. Today, as I was thinking (okay, brooding) about the disproportional political muscle of corporate superpacs, my online explorations led me to a site that’s well worth [...]
Go green for St. Patrick’s Day!
Friday, March 16th, 2012Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, which means there’ll be a lot of partying across the country. Parades, parties, shamrock pins, pub crawls involving massive quantities of green beer … Chicago even plans to continue its long-standing tradition of dyeing the Chicago River green at 10:00 AM local time. It’ll be a lot of [...]
What’s wrong with compromise?
Friday, February 17th, 2012Last week, I promised to start dedicating my Friday posts to issues involving social ethics. For my first post in this series, I want to challenge the popular notion that the best way to address a problem is by “fighting” for a solution. This isn’t just an abstract point. If you listen [...]
Happy Birthday, Boz!
Friday, February 10th, 2012This week marked the two hundredth birthday of a literary legend. The great Charles Dickens, author of more than a dozen novels and numerous short stories and articles, playwright, lecturer, actor, and darling of Victorian society on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, was born in Portsea, England, on January 7, 1812. There [...]
Don’t manage impressions
Saturday, January 7th, 2012Continuing my Friday series on keeping your business out of court, I want to touch on a subject that’s been bugging me of late. Recently, I’ve been called upon to deal with a group of professionals who didn’t handle a sensitive situation particularly well. Their behavior offers a lesson that smart businesspeople would [...]
Chicago anchorwoman’s Santa apology flopped!
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011Chicago Fox anchorwoman Robin Robinson probably wishes she could hide out at the North Pole after encouraging parents not to let their kids believe in Santa. “Stop trying to convince your kids that Santa is Santa,” Robinson said to cohost Bob Sirott during a segment on December 2nd. “That’s why they have these high [...]
Should you have to be brutal to succeed in business?
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011TheStreet.com is running a new “Fast Track” series that features high-powered women in the financial industry. They invited me to write a piece on Abby Joseph Cohen, the Goldman Sachs economist and financial analyst who’s been known for decades, and sometimes criticized, for her unfailing bullishness. Ms. Cohen rose to national prominence when [...]
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