Ethics Environments

I talk a lot about poor ethics environments, probably the single most important element in unethical conduct. But since loyalty is the strongest force in such environments, a great deal of work is done to hide the existence of poor ethics environments. After unethical conduct is discovered, it is rare for anyone to set out just how bad things were.

But sometimes things are so bad, it becomes clear that there aren't just a couple of bad apples, but a whole bad crop...

In the last installment of the ongoing Stamford (CT) ethics battle, the major antagonist had reached a settlement with the ethics board, and the principal cases, both ethics proceedings and a federal suit against the ethics board and the ethics complainants, were withdrawn. But this is a grudge match, and the major antagonist, who resigned from his position as chair of the board of finance,...

Despite the many differences between corporate and government ethics, sometimes the corporate ethics world has a lot to teach the government ethics world, especially considering that corporate ethics has a zillion times the personnel and budget to work with.

One example of this appears in a Harvard Business Review blog post yesterday by Francesca Gino, a Harvard Business School...

On February 10, 2008, Bobby Jindal, the newly elected governor of Louisiana, said in a big speech:

Today, we take the first step towards building a better Louisiana where our ethics laws are the gold standard - letting the rest of the world know that corruption will no longer find a home here. The actions that we will take over the coming days will have...

I had a conversation with a developer the other day, which got me thinking in what I think are interesting ways about unwritten land use rules.

Let's Not Drink to It
Yes, it has happened. Local government ethics has been compared to Prohibition.