Leadership is tough in today's changing world. To succeed, leaders must embrace new ideas, take risks, and accept failure. However, some take shortcuts to stay ahead, leading to many scandals. This raises the question: can innovation and integrity coexist?
The University of Northern Iowa recently held an inaugural ethics workshop for faculty. Co-hosted by Robert Earle and John Preston, this three-day event offered engaging lectures, valuable ethics lessons and collaborative discussions aimed at enriching ethics education across campus.
Innovation is happening at a never-before-seen pace. While there’s a rush toward something new and exciting, the role of ethics in the decision-making process can take a back seat and be undervalued, leaving businesses open to risk.
“It’s all about the money!” Sports fans probably recently read or heard sportswriters and commentators employ this “hoary chestnut” (a phrase that is itself a cliché) in the wake of the collapse of the venerable Pacific-12 conference. For once, a cliché is apt. The scramble for desirable Pac-12 teams (sorry, Oregon State and Washington State fans) was all about the money.
Johnny Paycheck’s song, “Take This Job and Shove It,” expresses a fundamental human right in the United States. Many workers fantasize about the day they can use Paycheck’s song title in confronting their boss. Yes, it is a rude and crude sentiment, but it is an American right.
Milton Friedman advocated profit-focused business responsibility, while John Elkington introduced the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit). Today, businesses prioritize stakeholders' well-being, environmental impact, profit, and purpose-driven initiatives. Corporate social responsibility attracts customers and recruits socially conscious employees.
For years defining and pigeon-holing generations has been a cottage industry. Some pundits have pitted generation against generation, including the condescending dismissal expressed by some contemporary young people: “Okay, Boomer.”
Suppose you just graduated from UNI with a degree in marketing. You’ve converted your summer internship into a permanent sales job. Congratulations. A few years into your job, however, you start noticing prospectuses regarding robots.
I’ve never watched Tom Hanks in the movie Forrest Gump. I have heard his famous line about life resembling a box of chocolates and never knowing what you are going to get. A local television station ran a story exposing the increasing amount of plastic in boxes of Valentine’s Day chocolates.
