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Renewable energy, eco-friendly construction, and many other green initiatives are markets that promise to generate jobs and profits. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton issues a call to CEOs to embrace sustainability and apply it to their operations, since that's where the growth is.

The Virtue Matrix, first introduced in a 2002 Harvard Business Review article, is a tool developed by the lead author that provides a concrete, actionable framework for creating a corporate citizenship strategy. The goals of CSR have long been poorly defined and unclear, and as a result, many companies are uncertain of the rules or the benefits of doing what is 'right'. The authors argue that as regulations become tighter and solutions more difficult, the capacity of firms to innovate in this arena will become increasingly valuable. The best organizations, they say, will stand out by fully complying with the laws of their industry and jurisdiction; meeting the highest level of current non-regulated norms; having projects underway in the 'strategic frontier' of the Virtue Matrix; and being an active participant in 'structural frontier' projects as well. In addition to describing the four quadrants of the Virtue Matrix in detail, the authors show how companies can protect the best of what currently is - the civil foundation - and contribute to the expansion of what could be, through activities on the frontier.

In this May 2009 interview, Harvard Business School Professor and SSRN chairman Michael Jensen defines 'integrity', explains how it differs from morality and ethics, and argues that the effects of out-of-integrity behavior are significantly more damaging than most of us believe. He explains that people are not the only ones that can have integrity: objects and systems can have it too - indeed, they can only obtain maximum performance by maintaining integrity. He describes the distinction between the integrity of design, the integrity of implementation and the integrity of use. Reflecting on the 2008-09 finance crisis, the author says that putting the economic system back in order is deceptively simple: "people have to start honoring their word. If they do, trust will materialize almost instantly."

We care deeply about what other people think of us, and as a result, 'mattering maps' exert a powerful influence on our behavior. In principle, there is a mattering map for each person, each social environment and for society as a whole, and because each person typically belongs to more than one social group--workplace, family, friends-these groups and the mattering maps that apply to them often overlap. Mattering maps may be a source of misery for some, but given the realities of human nature, they cannot be avoided. The authors show that in the end, they enable both the greatest accomplishments of the human race when we compete to outdo one-another in things that are constructive, and our greatest follies when we compete over activities that are wasteful or destructive.

Without realizing it, managers delegate unethical behavior to people in their organizations on a regular basis. This occurs whenever someone tells their subordinates to 'do whatever it takes' to achieve production or sales goals, leaving open the possibility of aggressive or even unethical tactics; it happens when companies outsource production to offshore subcontractors that are inexpensive because they are less constrained by costly labor and environmental standards; and it happens when partners at accounting firms remind junior auditors about the importance of retaining a client that has inappropriate accounting practices. In these and countless other situations, people are motivated to overlook the problematic ethical implications of other people's behavior. The result: scandals that can cost trillions of dollars. The good news, say the authors, is that the evidence strongly supports the notion that most people value ethical decisions and behavior and strive to develop the habit of ethicality. Nevertheless, people still find themselves engaging in unethical behavior because of biases that influence their decisions-biases of which they may not be fully aware. Fighting human nature is no easy task, but the authors explain that leaders can and must make the structural changes necessary to reduce the harmful effects of our psychological and ethical limitations.

Members of organizations are naturally motivated to consider the attitudes and opinions of their peers in order to gauge others' reactions to their decisions and assess where they stand relative to organizational norms. However, the authors found strong evidence that people are not very good at estimating the percentage of others who agree with their choices, and that this tendency has major implications for ethical decision making. Specifically, they argue that people fall victim to a False-Consensus Bias, wanting to believe that others are more like them than not. While ethical pundits may predict that 'loners' would be more likely to violate ethical standards because they lack insight into others' attitudes and have fewer colleagues to whom they can turn for help or advice, the authors suggest that the social butterfly, rather than the social outcast, may actually be more likely to erroneously assume that their ethical judgments are in line with the normative view. In a workplace environment, the potential danger is that employees who act in ways that most others consider unethical may confidently believe that their actions are in line with the socially-shared ethical standard when making decisions. And as we have seen, the end-results can be widespread and severe.

Accountability has become a major buzzword of late, cited to be at the core of market meltdowns and revivals and one of the basic buildings blocks of successful businesses. As a result, it has become a topic of investigation by a large coterie of consultants, social scientists and practitioners. Break the riddle of accountability, the thinking goes, and you will have solved one of the biggest issues in modern business. The author argues that most of the proposed approaches focus too narrowly on tasks, responsibilities, personal attributes and measurement systems - all of which are important aspects of accountability, but overlook its three most important features: its relationality, reflexivity and relativity. He explains that accountability is relational in that it involves a promise or commitment from me to you; it is reflexive in that it says something about me and about our relationship that I have to internalize and accept; and it is relative to a set of background assumptions and a background audience - made up of those who can witness my commitment to you and those who cannot, but could. Keeping promises and accounting for their breaches in credible, genuine and authentic ways is what makes organizations work, societies thrive, and cultures promulgate themselves into the future. The commitment path described by the author can thus be seen as an 'audit trail' for the journey of promising, a way of assigning responsibility in the face of ambiguity, mendacity and subterfuge.

When interpersonal risks loom large in the moment, human beings often fail to act in their own or in their organization's best interest. When uncertainty clouds peoples' tentative thoughts and views - views that may be at odds with those of others' - they often take the path of 'reduced interpersonal resistance' to avoid conflict and confrontation. This can happen when a lot is at stake (a patient's health, an aircraft's safety, a costly takeover) and when not much is at stake (a small improvement idea is not communicated to the individual who could act on it). Either way, the silence, along with the incomplete thoughts that lie behind it, inhibits team learning in organizations that depend upon such learning for their ongoing viability. As a result, in virtually every organization, failed collaboration occurs countless times throughout the day, usually without much conscious attention. Diversity of three particular types exacerbates these tendencies. The authors explain how 'psychological safety' can enable team diversity to be better and leveraged, allowing a team to reap the benefits associated with diverse sets of skills, experience, knowledge and backgrounds in ways that would not be possible if team members were unwilling to take the risks associated with speaking up.

Each year in March, 800 delegates from 60 countries convene for the Skoll World Forum, a gathering of the world's leading social entrepreneurs organized by the Skoll Foundation. Prominent figures from the social, academic, finance, corporate and policy sectors engage for three days of debates, discussions and work sessions focused on scaling solutions to some of the world's most pressing issues. This article summarizes one of the panels, "Leadership for Change," which featured five prominent business leaders/social entrepreneurs: Hasbro's Chairman Alan Hassenfeld; Cisco's Senoir VP, Corporate Affairs, Tae Yoo; Amamex International's Founder and CEO, Fadi Ghandour; Pitney Bowes' past Executive Chairman Michael Critelli; and Intel's General Manager, Sustainability, William Swope. Each discusses their organization's approach to CSR, sample initiatives and leadership lessons.

According to the author, we are in the midst of a tectonic-plate movement in the financial world that is shaking the 'real' world quite dramatically. The purpose of the article is not to review the causes or longevity of the 2008-2009 finance crisis, but to explore the curiosity that in the world of publicly- traded companies, boards of directors have once again let society down. Complicating matters is the fact that, just as a re-balancing of the directors' role was taking shape post-Sarbanes Oxley, expected reforms in the areas of risk management and compensation will once again challenge director effectiveness. While boards will never be able to predict the future, the author argues that they can become more effective instruments for helping management devise plausible and actionable strategies if they do three simple things: take charge of their own agendas, manage their time effectively against three time horizons (past, present and future), and continually assess their performance against best practices.

With many still reeling from the ripple effects of the 2008-09 global financial crisis, it has become abundantly clear that the principles and ethics of business are fundamental to economic success. Recovering from this systemic failure and ensuring that it never repeats itself will require new thinking about the types of institutions on which a successful economy depends, and more importantly, on the relationships between those institutions. The authors' aim is not to lay out a detailed framework for bank solvency, accounting regulation or corporate governance; rather, it is to clarify the principles on which any responsible market system will rest, and how these might be applied. It is also to suggest various actions that market participants can take to prevent similar disasters. The authors show that, in many ways, an effective economy is like an effective political system: it has checks and balances, accountabilities, responsibilities, information flows and cultures. They go on to describe the five principles of 'accountable capitalism', and the four levels of stakeholders required to make it a reality.

Corporate leaders need to realize that unlimited GDP growth is untenable. Soon, developed countries will focus less on consumerism and more on communities, the environment, and quality of life.

Though the overall toy market is declining, LEGO's revenues and profits are climbing - largely because the company revamped its innovation efforts to align with strategy.

Most customer service centers use time on hold and minutes per call as measures of how effective they are. Research shows that they should look instead at the percentage of customers' problems resolved with just one call.

According to Bain & Company's chairman, persistent questioning produces the best solutions, and it's the best way to build trust and rapport.

To communicate in a way that resonates with your workers, you'll have to get to know them first.

Greening your business, and involving everyone in the process, can keep people motivated and help your company survive the economic downturn.

A Catalyst poll of business school graduates who went to work for corporations or professional firms reveals how these up-and-comers are faring during the recession.

The M-form, in which a corporate parent manages relatively freestanding business units, was the most successful organizational design of the twentieth century. However, contemporary economic conditions call for designs that allow firms to exploit synergies across their business units, and on this dimension the M-form is notoriously weak. This article reports on empirical research that highlights the fundamental tension between clear lines of authority and the exploitation of synergies that firms face as they move away from the M-form and implement shared service centers, corporate account management, and matrix organizations. However, a limited but substantial number of firms have evolved organizational designs that signal a new way of resolving this tension. These firms are organized around multiple dimensions (e.g., region, product, and account) and are able to simultaneously hold different managers accountable for performance on these dimensions. The multidimensional organization is best understood as the next step in the evolution from a resource-centric physical production model to a customer-centric knowledge-exploitation model. It is a way of organizing that is particularly well adapted to stimulating the teamwork that is necessary to create economic value in complex markets on the basis of distributed knowledge and intangible resources.

Every generation of managers experiments with new organizational forms-new business models and the organizational structures and management processes required to support them. Much of the current experimentation with business and organizational models is occurring in knowledge-intensive industries such as biotechnology, computers, telecommunications, and medical and scientific equipment. The principal business model emerging in these and similar industries can be called market exploration. Market exploration is a firm's pursuit of opportunities created by intersecting technologies and markets. The market exploration process is complex, involving technology development, product development, and commercialization in collaboration with customers and other firms, as well as involving the orderly development of markets that have large but unknown potential. Firms that want to be effective at market exploration must organize specifically for innovation-they must be able to build and manage an I-form organization. This article shows how many firms are moving towards and improving the I-form organization and discusses its purpose, key features, and benefits.