Archive for 2020

Have you checked your behavioral externalities?

In The Case for Adding Darwin to Behavioral Economics posted on the Ethical Systems web site,  Robert H. Frank  of Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management writes: I use the term “behavioral externalities” to describe choices that affect social environments… Because social environments influence us so profoundly, both for good […]

An SCCE podcast on assessing corporate culture

Available here. I hope you find it useful.

Behavioral ethics and the road ahead

With the Supreme Court twice this week refusing to hear challenges by the Trump campaign to various results of the Presidential election, hopefully the country can move forward full steam ahead in addressing the many daunting tasks it faces. But in what spirit shall it do so? Personally, I have […]

Compliance certifications: an under-used mitigation tool

A just-published post on the FCPA Blog. I hope you find it useful.

Robots and conflicts of interest

From “Do You Have a Conflict of Interest? This Robotic Assistant May Find It First”  recently published in the NY Times: What should science do about conflicts of interest? When they are identified, they become an obstacle to objectivity… Sometimes a conflict of interest is clear cut. … But other […]

A (partial) conflict of interest agenda for Biden

There are many reasons to celebrate the  apparent defeat of Donald Trump in the presidential election, but among the top ones for me is his total antipathy toward rules and norms concerning conflicts of interest. Trump has created or maintained literally thousand of COIs during his presidency.   The concern here […]

Do honesty pledges work?

Pledges often sound like a good idea but whether they are depends on various factors. Just ask Jim Comey. In Honesty Pledges for the Behaviorally-based Regulation of Dishonesty, Eyal Pe’er, School of Public Policy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem,  and Yuval Feldman, Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University,  take up the topic of […]

Effective Discipline According to the DOJ.

My latest column in Compliance & Ethics Professional.  I hope you find it interesting.

Do compliance officers have an inherent conflict of interest?

In Agency, Authority, and Compliance, Sean J. Griffith of the  Fordham University School of Law argues: Compliance can and often does serve as a conduit through which regulators and enforcement authorities enlarge their authority beyond statutory bounds. The potential to do so is a function of the symbiotic relationship between compliance […]

Behavioral ethics and compliance to the rescue?

A colleague once voiced the view that the C&E field was “out of energy and out of ideas.”  I have often been of the same mind but am cheered by the advent in recent years  of “behavioral ethics and compliance” The need for new C&E ideas was recently articulated in […]