ethics

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

The Scientist magazine reported last week that pharma giant Merck had invented its own peer review medical journal in order to better hype its products; of 29 articles, almost two-thirds referred to Fosamax or Vioxx.

And we're surprised?

by: Michael Hoexter

In Part 1 of this post I summarized US and worldwide efforts to create legal standards to limit GHG emissions and described the political opposition to these efforts as based on a narrow conception of liberty, negative liberty, popular among conservatives over the last three decades. I introduced two types of ethical system, deontology and utilitarianism as helpful in understanding the debates over climate legislation.

by: Jennifer Rice

There’s been a lot of discussion about elevating corporate responsibility to become a strategic driver of your business. Most companies would like to benefit from their ethical efforts in the form of increased customer attraction and loyalty, yet few have figured out how to do it successfully. When marketing and PR are relied on, it can often backfire in accusations of greenwashing. The secret is to apply brand-strategy principles to build your ethical reputation.

by: Jennifer Rice

Dear reader: this is a white-paper draft, and I’d love your comments (especially if I’m missing anything major in the audit framework) before publishing.

by: Jennifer Rice

I just ran across an article in WSJ that answered the question,"How much are consumers willing to pay for ethically produced goods?" These statistics are only among coffee drinkers (cotton t-shirt buyers had a much narrower range of price elasticity) but it's a good data point that the "conscious consumer" is no longer a niche market segment.

by: Jonathan Salem Baskin

Consumers are willing to pay more for ethically produced products, according to a study published in yesterday's Wall Street Journal and the MIT/Sloan Management Review.

The researchers, both Canadian academics, defined "socially responsible" companies as those which are:

by: Roger Dooley

As the current financial chaos moves toward some kind of resolution, there will no doubt be plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking to explain what went wrong. One group that one wouldn’t expect to have explanations are neuroscientists. As it turns out, neuroscience researchers actually can shed some light on why things went so wrong.

by: George Silverman

by: Scott Goodson

This old film from circa 1950 is all about the powers of outdoor advertising. But in truth it's right out of the pages of 1984 and a rather creepy v/o tells you how to lead the lemmings to the edge of the cliffs.

by: Gary Hayes

RealMedia and Microsoft have had their knuckles rapped once already and it seems that the normally tread-carefully Apple have started to upset a few folk with their ‘collaborative filtering’ methodologies via iTunes.