Resources & Learning

This third blog post on Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect looks at some ways to deal with situational forces. Recognizing Our Limitations One of the college students who played a guard in the Stanford Prison Experiment said later, "I was actually beginning to feel like a guard and had reall…

This second blog post on Philip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect applies the situational approach to government ethics programs, and looks at the situational forces at play with respect to ethical misconduct. The Situational Approach It is in the interests of those who are responsible for the pre…

A year and a half ago, I wrote a blog post about a 2007 book by Philip Zimbardo, entitled The Lucifer Effect. I had read about Zimbardo's book in another book, Susan Neiman's Moral Clarity. I finally got around to reading The Lucifer Effect, and I highly recommend it, despite its length and the sma…

The participation of professionals in local government has become problematic, according to the authors of Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Professional standards used to be ethics-oriented, but they have become predominately technical. "Being good becomes a matte…

Trust in government is a requirement for participation in government, what the authors of Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life refer to as "civic membership." This is strongest at the local level, where we are most likely to get involved in person rather than through p…

This is the second half of my look at Mary C. Gentile's 2010 book, Giving Voice to Values. Naming and Framing Framing is central to acting on one's values. So often ethics matters have already, effectively, been framed (and justified) by an organization. There are accepted truisms (this is the way …

The failure to deal responsibly with conflicts of interest has many causes, but the principal cause is the silence of those who are not directly responsible. I've written several times about some of the reasons for this silence:  fear, justifications, lack of moral courage, and a lack of a feeling …

Two months ago, a book was published called The Jersey Sting, by two Star-Ledger reporters, Ted Sherman and Josh Margolin. It provides the history of an enormous federal sting operation which led to the arrest of dozens of government officials, most of them from local governments, on July 23, 2009 …

Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel, the authors of the new book Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It (Princeton University Press), present several ways of dealing with the many problems they raise in their book. One solution is to align what they call our "want" an…

I've noted on several occasions that indirect conflicts are among the most problematic areas in government ethics. Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It, a new book by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press), looks into some of the psychologi…