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Articles & Blogs
Hand-picked for you from around the web + original articles published just on the Moral Markets site
Finding Virtue in the Finance Industry
“Finance can be a force for good in society but, over the past few decades, structural and behavioral changes have pushed the industry away from its mission of serving clients and supporting the economy in favor of enriching itself. At worst, financial services firms are mired in conflicts of interests, cloaked in opacity and complexity, and skewed by information asymmetry. Many of my students are keen to work in finance but concerned about being corrupted as soon as they walk into their first jobs. What can be done to restore confidence in the industry?”
Enligthened Capitalism, Conscious Leadership and Virtue Ethics; Four Recent Books
The conviction that leaders and their companies can perform well by doing what is good or right has been on the rise again in the past decade, according to Martijn Hendriks in a recent overviewof scientific literature on this topic [in Dutch, unfortunately]. This increased attention has also resulted in the appearance of various books for a larger audience. In this article, four recent books are discussed and compared.
Sin and Vice Do not Belong in the GDP
“On a larger scale, international standards of measurement help economists develop monetary policy, make economic forecasts, and monitor growth. But greed, fraud, and theft can easily find their way into financial transactions. That is why economics must be subject to those higher normative sciences like ethics that regulate all human behavior.”
Do Traditional Compliance Efforts Weaken Workers’ Moral Motivation?
“How can organizations actualize their employees’ ethical potential? It’s a question Carsten Tams has been tossing around recently. In his time helping companies with organizational design and cultural change, among other things, he’s come to believe that, in the right environment, people are quite capable, even eager, to conform with and uphold ethical norms. Behavioral science, specifically motivational science, offers valuable insights for how to harness employees’ best intentions.”
The Driving Force of Free Markets Is Empathy, not Greed
“are greed and unbridled selfishness really the driving forces of capitalism? Human self-interest is one—not the only—driving force of all human action. But this has nothing to do with a particular economic system. Rather, it is an anthropological constant. In capitalism, however, this self-interest is curbed by the fact that only the entrepreneur who prioritizes other people’s needs can be successful.”
Article written by the author of the book The Power of Capitalism; A Journey through Recent History across Five Continents (2018)
Lost Wallets More Likely To Be Returned If They Hold Cash
“Would you be more likely to return a wallet you found on the street if it contained cash? A new study suggests you would — not necessarily because you’re altruistic, but because you don’t want to feel like a thief.”
