Four Ethics Links: March 22, 2010
You know and love Four Design Links; now say hello to Four Ethics Links, a review of recent stories in applied ethics.
Beware of corporate consulting firms offering awards for corporate ethics – Slate
Sometime in the next week or so, something called the Ethisphere Institute is scheduled to announce this year’s list of the “World’s Most Ethical Companies.” If past years are any indication, the winners will have their press releases ready to go, and news outlets across the country will eat it up. There’s just one hitch: These ethics awards—let’s call them the Ethies—may have ethics issues of their own.
The Ethical Dog – Scientific American
Chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates regularly make the news when researchers, logically looking to our closest relatives for traits similar to our own, uncover evidence of their instinct for fairness. But our work has suggested that wild canine societies may be even better analogues for early hominid groups—and when we study dogs, wolves and coyotes, we discover behaviors that hint at the roots of human morality.
Ethics of Monitoring PC Activity – PCWorld
A Pennsylvania school district is under fire, and facing a potential class-action lawsuit related to allegations that it spied on students in their homes using school-issued laptops. Organizations have a right, and sometimes even an obligation, to monitor activity on their computers or network, but the ethics involved are often hazy.
Integrating Ethics Into The Core Of Your Startups: Why And How – TechCrunch
It is best to be aware of the temptations and to prevent the lapses from occurring. As Enron, Bernie Madoff, and Lehman Brothers have shown, it’s a slippery slope. Once you start compromising your values for short-term gains, there is no turning back. Business ethics are not something you need to start worrying about when your company reaches a certain size; they need to be sewn into the fabric of your startup from the get-go. The lessons are the same for tech businesses as they are for investment banks and for third-world economies.
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