An Ethical Systems Book Review BY JOSHUA ELLE Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Successby Adam GrantPenguin Group (2013) (public library)Summarized by Joshua Elle Overview Adam Grant combines personal accounts and contemporary research, both made readily accessible, to build a case for thinking of people as takers, matchers, and givers. He shows how givers tend…
BY DAVID DOBOLYI INTRODUCTION Every organization must confront the challenge of motivating its work force. From research on fairness in organizational contexts (‘organizational justice research’) we know that fairness is one key. Organizational justice research consistently finds that employees are more motivated when they feel that organizational resources are allocated fairly, that organizational decisions are made in fair ways, and…
An Ethical Systems Book Review BY DAVID NEWMAN Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk About How To Do It Rightby Linda K. Treviño and Katherine A. NelsonJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc., 5th ed. (2011) (public library)Summarized by David Newman Overview Treviño and Nelson present a fresh look at management as an exercise in shaping human behavior. Replete with psychological research on…
An Ethical Systems Book Review BY DAVID NEWMAN Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hardby Chip Heath and Dan HeathCrown Business, 1st Ed. (2010) (public library)Summarized by Jennifer Fang Overview Change is difficult, or so most people believe. Switch identifies the crucial factors in effecting lasting changes for both individuals and organizations. Dan and Chip Heath draw…
An Ethical Systems Book Review Summarized by BRYAN TURNER Written by Nicholas Epley Knopf, Borzoi Books (2014) Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want is a book about our “sixth sense”, or mindreading, but there’s nothing supernatural about it. Epley is an experimental social psychologist, and this is a book about his research…
An Ethical Systems Book Review Summarized by JAI MALIK Written by Richard Thaler [public library] Summary: What do economics, psychology, and experimental science have in common? As Richard Thaler implies in Misbehaving, most economists would say little to none — but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Misbehaving is, first and foremost, a story of how modern economics, finance, and…
An Ethical Systems Book Review BY DAVID NEWMAN Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and HappinessRichard H. Thaler, Cass R. SunsteinPenguin Books, Revised & Expanded edition (2009) (public library)Summarized by Erick Rabin Introduction Choice Architecture involves organizing any context in which people make decisions. Urinals, stairwells, alarm clocks, school cafeterias, retirement accounts—all of these can be made…
An Ethical Systems Book Review BY DAVID NEWMAN Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Planby Francesca GinoHarvard Business Review Press (2013) (public library)Summarized by Jennifer Fang Overview The adage “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” succinctly summarizes the difficulties of executing even the most…
BY JEREMY WILLINGER Ethics and trust are inextricably linked. We are interested in ethics in large part because we are concerned, even obsessed, with the question of who we can trust is a world where there is risk and uncertainty. In our relationships, we humans are much more concerned about assessing trustworthiness of others than we…
ETHICAL SYSTEMS Cheating, misconduct, deception and other forms of unethical behavior are widespread today, not just in business but in sports, government, schools, and many other arenas. While the media often focuses on extreme cases of cheating and sensational scams (such as Madoff’s ponzi scheme), less attention is paid to what researchers call “ordinary unethical behavior.” For example:…
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