The McGowan Blog on Business Leadership and Ethics – Brand New Business Ethics Blog!

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I want to extend a warm welcome to Larry Kahaner and his new blog. I have been reading it and I recommend you do so as well. I added it to my favorites and my blog roll. I believe that would make it the 12th blog I have recommended in that manner.

This is the intro for the first post on The McGowan Blog on Business Leadership and Ethics.

Larry Kahaner

This is the first of a twice-weekly blog on business leadership and ethics hosted by the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund. We will discuss current issues, ask questions, offer opinions and solicit your comments with the goal of spurring conversations among the business, government and academic communities.  The subject of whistleblowers has been a controversial topic lately, so let’s begin.

There are now three posts as follows:

Feb. 27 –

Is Whistleblowing  the Only Way to Spur Ethical Behavior?
  
( First Line) As a society, we Americans love whistleblowers. They are our folk heroes, our Davids versus Goliaths.

March 2 –  

Are B-Schools Teaching the Right Lessons About Ethics?After the Enron scandal and again after the Worldcom debacle, B-schools juiced up their ethics courses partly out of guilt, partly to deflect public and government criticism and partly because these scandals offered a perfect time for professors to sell ethics curricula to school leadership. We’re seeing the same thing now. Don’t get me wrong; I applaud any effort to increase ethics training – and I’m not so cynical to say that it won’t work this time – but have  previous attempts worked as well as we had hoped?

March 8 –
 
In light of these massive changes, what is the role that multinational U.S. business should play in American society considering that their main interests are moving offshore? Indeed, the U.S consumer and the U.S. government have all helped produce world-class, profitable and innovative American companies. What, if anything, do these companies owe the U.S. government and its people for making them the global giants that they are today?
 
 Here is a brief biographical sketch from the blog –
Larry Kahaner has been a business journalist for more than 20 years, a former Business Week Washington correspondent, and the author of many books about business ethics including: Values Prosperity and the Talmud: Business Lessons from the Ancient Rabbis; Competitive Intelligence: How to Gather, Analyze, and Use Information to Move Your Business to the Top; and Say It and Live It; The 50 Corporate Mission Statements that  Hit  the Mark, (co-author). You can reach him at: McGowanFundBlog@gmail.com.

A Threat To Religious Liberty for Some is a Threat To All (via Confessions of a Small Church Pastor)

On By southwerkIn ethics

I have said on this blog a number of times that I consider those Americans who practice the religion of Islam to be as much patriots as any other religious group in American.

Thus, it is not surprising that I like this article.

James Pilant

A Threat To Religious Liberty for Some is a Threat To All Religious liberty is at risk in the United States today.   Rep. Peter King (R-NY), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday to explore the issue of the radicalization of Muslims here in the United States.  While this might appear to be a legitimate national security concern, Rep. King’s history and previous statements raise serious questions about his intent. Civil rights groups, religious leaders, and other … Read More

via Confessions of a Small Church Pastor

Hardshipping (via non-recourse life)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

This is another of the human tragedies associated with the foreclosure crisis. I think the policy makers flying in their circles above us have forgotten that it is real people who need their consideration.

James Pilant

Last week I finally submitted my hardship letter (and other proofs of personal financial humiliation). It’s not my best writing, but I’ll post it for you voyeurs and short-selling plagarists out there. Heck, I stole the words “financial ruin” myself from another online hardship letter sample.  It had a certain ring to it. What I really wanted to say was: C’mon bank people, we all know why we’re here. Please just look at the documents I provided a … Read More

via non-recourse life

Surf’s Up, Condensed: Top Creativity Links for March 9, 2011 (via Creative Liberty)

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

I’m a big fan of the arts. I think Americans should pay a lot more attention to creativity. This blog talks about the arts and creativity. And it provides a good number of links with original information about these.

I read through them. It’s well written. If you are a patron of arts or creativity, go here.

James Pilant

Surf’s Up, Condensed: Top Creativity Links for March 9, 2011 Photo courtesy of SXC. The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest This is a PDF link to a rather disturbing working paper disseminated by Harvard Business School. Co-authored by Francesca Gino, an associate professor in the Negotiations, Organizations, and Markets Unit at Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, the paper lists four studies conducted by the authors that w … Read More

via Creative Liberty

China Moves Aggressively on Indian Border (via The Times of India)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

From the Times of India, an article by Rajat Pandit.

Apart from nuclear missile bases in Qinghai province which clearly target India, China has built five fully-operational airbases, an extensive rail network and over 58,000 km of roads in Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).

People’s Liberation Army is also rapidly upgrading several other airstrips in TAR as well as south China, to add to the five airbases from where Chinese Sukhoi-27UBK and Sukhoi-30MKK fighters have practised operations in recent times.

Moreover, with extensive road-rail links in TAR, PLA can amass upwards of two divisions (30,000 soldiers) at their “launch pads” along the border in just 20 days now compared to the over 90 days it took earlier.

Why do I have to go to the Times of India to read about the Chinese building up their forces on the border?

What does this say about the security of American manufacturing and investment in Communist China?

China is never going to be the number one economic power on earth. They have territorial ambitions and scores to settle dating back hundreds of years.

In ten years, Americans confronted with the Chinese military ambitions will look back in astonishment that China was held in awe by scores of business commentators, politicians and what we laughingly call pundits.

Can you imagine the awe of future Americans that businesses in the United States thought it was a good idea to shift American jobs to China. .. that Americans built manufacturing plants and share technology including their latest patents with the Chinese?

Our relationship is already fraying in consideration of Chinese currency controls, their treatment of dissidents and a naval build up largely aimed at the United States Navy.

We will be dealing with China in the future, less economically and more as a military problem.

James Pilant

No One Killed Morality! (via Mythbroakia)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

This is a well written, thoughtful article. (The title is great by itself.) Journalists are confronted by thorny ethical issues on a continuous basis. He discusses this in very much a reality based manner while still hanging on to virtue.

I liked it. By the way, the site is beautiful. A lot of thought went into the design and it’s visually stunning. So, go and read the article but if you don’t want to, click over just to have a look at the site.

James Pilant

No One Killed Morality! One practical concern in journalistic ethics is that of morality. What is the relation between morality and competence in journalism? Must a good journalist be really morally strong as well? What is meant by morality in the first instance? Is a journalist bound by the standards of ordinary morality? Is there a special journalistic morality that is se … Read More

via Mythbroakia

Comedian Mike DeStefano Dead

On By southwerkIn Uncategorized

From Huffington Post –

Comedian Mike DeStefano has passed away following a heart attack on Sunday Punchline Magazine reports, and it is an enormous loss for the comedy community.

I like comedians. They are free to tell us things we wouldn’t take from anyone else. They are another window on reality.  Don’t get me wrong – they can miss reality further than a rock thrown at the moon. But the good ones, they are our street philosophers.

James Pilant

Warning Strong Language – Very Strong Language – Biting, mean comedy – Tons of Racial Jokes

Happy House, Sad House (via Mike LaMonica’s Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Mike LaMonica calls us to look at a single home, a beautiful home. I would guess another mortgage foreclosure. I’ve seen houses around here that have been for sale so long, that one of the two word supports has rotted and left the for sale sign in the grass.

I love houses. I like the old ones, brick and sturdy. The mid-sixties ranch house designs are my favorite. It’s a tragedy when a beautiful house goes empty.

LaMonica is right. It is sad.

James Pilant

Happy House, Sad House It all started out with so much promise. In about 2004 construction began on this house at 4191 Ingraham Highway in Coconut Grove, FL. It was an odd shaped lot and I wondered how they would plant a house there. But sure enough it started to go up and took shape.  Then the most beautiful day of all came.  The builders put up a tastefully done custom sign that said, “FUTURE HOME OF THE JONES FAMILY” and I thought it was a nice and personalized touc … Read More

via Mike LaMonica’s Blog

Newspaper Business Pages – Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

(A reprint of a previous column)

I search for people talking and writing about ethics and reform. Since we are discussing business ethics, a good place for me to hunt for these kinds of writers is on the business pages of large circulation newspapers. It’s not much fun. Fortunately not all business writers live in a cartoon like version of our world where noble business men are limited by government regulation from making us all rich and happy, where the chief problem with the stock market is pessimism, and where stupid home buyers ruined the economy, but many perhaps most do.

Look, I believe in free enterprise. I think a business man should be able to make a profit. But a lot of what got us into the current mess had more to do with gambling with other people’s money that it did with investing. Further, I have a strong prejudice in favor of actually making stuff and investing in this nation’s future instead of moving money around as if that was “God’s work.” And if you think, that after seeing how derivatives work, watching the colossal failure of the rating agencies, the incredible passivity of the SEC and other government regulators, and the inability of the government, various huge corporations and the business publications to predict, prevent or ameliorate the current crisis, that I am going to blame individual home buyers for this mess, you just aren’t getting me.

If we just remain optimistic the recovery will continue is a regular thought for many business pages.  Jim Gallagher writing in St. Louis Today says that the principal danger from the Greek bail out and the crisis for the Euro is that investors fearing bad things will happen will behave irrationally and damage the market by selling. He provides reams of data to support his thesis. But in spite of all of his data, I have doubts. The European Common Market is a larger economy than the United States and many of their members are more question marks or problems than we like to acknowledge. I think fear is appropriate.

It’s all that home buying that brought us into this mess is an almost constant refrain. I can’t help but notice it was the collapse of a part of the derivatives market (a 600 trillion dollar gambling casino masquerading as an investment) that destroyed much of America’s economy. I also feel obligated to point out that those nasty, demented, foolish home buyers never seem to have figured out they could package their mortgages as securities, get them triple A status from compliant rating agencies, and then sell all over the world as if they were good investments relieving lenders of any responsibility for their decisions.

They say regulation is a bad idea. There is too much now. Golly Gee, looking over the ruins of the world economy and the thirty million American unemployed, you might think somebody did something wrong. But no, if anything bad happened it was not the fault of the huge investment banks (who got into a little trouble requiring trillions of dollars of bailout money), it was the fault of over regulation. Here’s Thomas Oliver from Atlanta Business News.

Well, so much for my pain. I have found in my searches many authors who inform, enlighten and motivate me.That makes it worthwhile.

James Pilant

Morally Right and Just

On By southwerkIn ethics, Government Failure

(A republish of an old column.)

“What is morally just and right – that’s not my job,” he said.

If a rapist, a murderer, an embezzler, any kind of criminal, had said this, we wouldn’t be surprised. If a corporate CEO said it here in the age of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School, I would not be particularly surprised but to hear it from the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court is a tragedy and an abomination.

Every human being and, in particular, every American has a responsibility to do what is right and hold others to moral responsibility. That is even more critical in the field of law where what must be a primary concern is justice.

What is particularly bizarre is that he spoke these words in a speech where he repeatedly praised President Lincoln. He said this:

Like most attorneys of his day, Lincoln didn’t go to law school and learned it by reading and working for other lawyers, Roberts said. He was a generalist who studied many things and was continually learning. He understood human nature and had a strong internal compass that allowed him to excel when he believed he was right.

What did President Lincoln say about morality? This is from the his Second Inauguration.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Let us as Americans, as believers in one religion or another, as believers in any philosophy in which good is considered more important than evil, struggle to make this land a better place. Let us always remember that we have an affirmative duty to fight evil and a responsibility to do what is right and honor justice whether we are the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or a simple citizen of a great nation.

James Pilant