The theme of the April edition of the Harvard Business Review is “Failure.” As scary as that term is in the world of compliance, “catastrophe” is even scarier. That means that the failure resulted is real, significant damage. But you can learn from failures. You can especially learn from others’ failures. In How to Avoid…
Tag: Harvard Business Review
Failure and Compliance
The theme of the April edition of the Harvard Business Review is “Failure.” That’s a scary term in the world of compliance. Generally, that means you’ve got government regulators or enforcement personnel sitting in your offices. And they are not happy. Failure and compliance can mean disciplinary action, fines, or jail time. But you can…
The Case for Professional Boards
If you want to improve governance at a corporation, do you need professional directors? Did SOX merely add a layer of legal obligations of board, and do little to improve the quality of those serving as directors? Robert C. Pozen makes the case in The Case for Professional Boards in the December issue of the…
Power Corrupts – So Does Powerlessness
Rosabeth Moss Kanter points out another reason that the “tone at the top” is only one factor for corporate compliance in Powerlessness Corrupts. “Power corrupts, as Lord Acton famously said, but so does powerlessness. Though powerlessness might not result in the egregious violations associated with arrogant officials who feel they are above the law, it…
Keeping Your Colleagues Honest
Mary C. Gentile put together a great piece on how to challenge unethical behavior at work in the March issue of the Harvard Business Review: Keeping Your Colleagues Honest. She starts with four rationalizations for staying silent when encountering an ethical problem: It’s standard practice. It’s not a big deal. It’s not my responsibility. I…
Six Mistakes Executives Make in Risk Management
Nassim N. Taleb, Daniel G. Goldstein, and Mark W. Spitznagel discuss risk management and short comings in approaches in the October 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review (subscription required). They offer up six mistakes in the way we think about risk: 1. We think we can manage risk by predicting extreme events. 2. We…
Ethics and the Sales Relationship in World-Class Bull
The May issue of the Harvard Business Review offers up an ethics problem in its monthly case study: World-Class Bull (subscription required for full article). The three commentaries offer very different reactions to the facts presented in the case study’s fact pattern. John Humphreys, Zafar U. Ahmed, and Mildred Pryor penned the fact pattern. The…
To Lead, Create a Shared Vision
In the January 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review is a short Forethought piece on the importance of leaders creating vision: To Lead, Create a Shared Vision. James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner emphasize the important of leaders creating vision for their organization and develop a forward-looking capacity. But rather than leaders thinking…
Ways Companies Mismanage Risk
René M. Stulz put together Six Ways Companies Mismanage Risk for the March issue of the Harvard Business Review. Professor Stulz summarizes his thoughts in that “conventional approaches to risk management present many pitfalls. Even in the best of times, if you are to manage risk effectively, you must make extremely good judgment calls involving…
The Unexpected Benefits of Sarbanes Oxley
The April 2006 issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article by Stephen Wagner and Lee Dittmar on The Unexpected Benefits of Sarbanes Oxley. Although the article is somewhat dated when it talks about the second year under Sarbanes Oxley, it foretells some of the current thoughts in compliance. Compliance is good for business. Two…