Ethics

Oct 20, 2023

David W. Wilson pledges $25 million donation to University of Northern Iowa

A historic gift to the University of Northern Iowa will mark a new chapter in the university’s renowned business college.

Sep 18, 2023

Cliché has merit

“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.

Aug 23, 2023

Country-Western Song Makes No Sense In Japan

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.

Jun 16, 2023

People, planet, profit and purpose: Business beyond shareholders

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.

Jun 02, 2023

Generational Stereotypes Poor Predictor

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.”

Robot and people waiting for an interview

May 12, 2023

The Bots Are Coming! (For Your Job)

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.

Feb 12, 2023

"Empty Boxes" of Valentine's Day Candies

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.

May 26, 2022

What if... We revised the business school curriculum?

I attended Texas Christian University as an undergraduate accounting major in the early to mid 1970s. I then got an MBA and PhD in business-related fields, and began my teaching career in 2000. Now, nearly 50 years later, I am thinking about what we do in our business schools across the USA. Clearly, nothing much has changed in the last half century that would impact business education—sorry, just being a bit sarcastic there! On the contrary, the past 50 years have seen unprecedented change in nearly every aspect of our lives.

Person walking up stairs into the sunlight

May 12, 2022

What if... We got serious about preparing for the future?

As my wife and I contemplate our 68th birthdays, we are increasingly thinking about what we plan to do for our remaining years, and the world we will leave our sons and daughter; even more to the point, what kind of world our 21-month-old grandson will grow up to see. Because I teach strategy and business ethics courses, I naturally relate national and world issues to a business context. As I look at the biggest problems facing us now, two related points stand out to me: 1) Business, writ large, is a (perhaps the) large contributor to those issues, and 2) It is most likely our best chan

Apr 28, 2022

What if... Moral motivation makes you a poor business person?

At some point way back in history, my wife and I were raising three elementary school aged kids. They each participated in the annual “Odyssey of the Mind” competition, designed to promote creativity among students. The central ideology of the program was “If it doesn’t say you can’t, you can.” My wife coached both their teams (I actually know how to do math—two of our kids were on the same team). Seeing the incredible amount of time and effort she put into that, I quickly opted out of coaching, and volunteered to be a judge at the local level on the day of competition.

Ethics Stories & News