Description
Gaining the Ethics Edge
From the Preface:
“It is as if some missing ingredient keeps our organizations from working. One of the hardest problems of management is simply finding this missing ingredient. The very persistence of the hard problems suggests something is radically wrong in the dictionary sense of ‘radical,’ meaning to the very root. My objective is to say what is wrong and more important, to start making it right”
(Mark Pastin, The Hard Problems of Management, preface).
From the Publisher:
This book addresses the seemingly intractable problems managers face today and offers a new way of dealing with them. Mark Pastin shows that the key to solving hard problems is going beyond slogans to the foundation of organizational success – the ethics or ground rules of the firm. By looking at difficult problems in tougher, ethical ways and asking hard, often uncomfortable questions to get at their core, managers gain the ethics edge – competitive advantages in tough markets and positive, effective responses to business threats. Based upon a three year study of such high-profit and high-ethics firms as ARCO, Jaguar, Motorola, and Data General, Pastin identifies how ethical factors were responsible for their success. And he shows others how to apply these factors to deal with labor disputes, formulate strategy, meet with new threats to business and more.
Reviews:
“The Hard Problems of Management ….is one of the most innovative contributions to business ethics in years, forcing us to define business ethics in more Olympian terms and view it as an integral component of business strategy. It is a timely book that ads intellectual excitement to a field that has needed some infusion of new ideas. – Business Form
“[Mark Pastin’s] point is not simply that business should be done honestly, but that business cannot survive without establishing an ethical foundation for all its interactions. . . . A fascinating subject presented with an interesting point of view” – Business Age
