Ethics and Capitalism: Stumbling into Bad Behavior

I came across a fascinating, if a bit limited, Oped this morning in today’s New York Times entitled, Stumbling into Bad Behavior. For sake of time, I’ll avoid recapping the entire article, and instead focus on teasing out a couple of its most interesting insights. The authors, Max H. Bazerman, a professor of Business Administration at Harvard, and Ann E. Tenbrunsel, a professor of management at the University of Notre Dame, introduce us to the concept of “motivated blindness”, which they describe as “the tendency to overlook information that works against one’s best interest.” This tendency they say can help us understand the underlying psychology that enables such rampant “ethical lapses in the corporate world.”

To read the entire blog visit: Ethics and Capitalism: Stumbling into Bad Behavior.