I am a Senior Lecturer of Leadership, Negotiations, and Ethics at the Yale School of Management. Much of my research focuses on conflicts of interest and the psychology of altruism.
Ethical Systems Interview (February 2015)
My Approach to Ethical Systems:
Like many of my fellow collaborators, I believe that many instances of ethical failure can be characterized by a failure to live up to personal values, so my MBA classes (e.g., “Business Ethics Meets Behavioral Economics”) examine the root causes of failure in judgment and decision-making, such as overconfidence, self-deception, inadequate perspective-taking, and conflicts of interest.
I also leverage my background in philosophy to lead students to contemplate our (personal and corporate) moral obligations to address societal needs (e.g., “Must/can a publicly traded firm care about anything other than its own long-term profits?”).
My Ethical Systems Research Page: Conflicts of Interest
Major Relevant Publications:
Books
- Conflicts of Interest: Challenges and Solutions in Business, Law, Medicine, and Public Policy (2005) (public library). This book is about conflicts of interest – how they can affect well-meaning professionals, limit the effectiveness of corporate boards, undermine professional ethics, corrupt expert opinion – and how to manage them.
Academic Articles
- “Giving versus Giving in,” article in The Academy of Management Annals (2014).
- “Tainted Altruism: When Doing Some Good is Evaluated as Worse Than Doing No Good at All,” article in Psychological Science (2014).
- “The burden of disclosure: Increased compliance with distrusted advice,” article in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2013).
- “The limits of transparency: Pitfalls and potential of disclosing conflicts of interest,” article in American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings (2011).
- “When sunlight fails to disinfect: Understanding the perverse effects of disclosing conflicts of interest,” article in the Journal of Consumer Research (2011).
- “Everyone’s a little bit biased (even physicians),” article in Journal of the American Medical Association (2008).
- “What you don’t know won’t hurt me: Costly (but quiet) exit in dictator games,” article in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (2006).
- “The dirt on coming clean: The perverse effects of disclosing conflicts of interest,” article in Journal of Legal Studies (2005).