This blog applies the principles from our book Ethics for the Real World (being published by Harvard Business Press and available in stores June 24, 2008) to current events. It shows how these principles can be used in practice. It also hopefully shows how needed these principles are in every walk of life and work.

Clint Korver

Clint Korver, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, has taught ethics as a visiting professor at Grinnell College. His position on the college’s board of trustees and head of the audit committee, combined with his broad business experience, puts him in constant touch with people facing thorny ethical issues.

Korver is the founder and CEO of DecisionStreet, an internet company which builds web-based tools to help people make important life decisions about health, wealth, housing, and family affairs. He is also a managing partner with Decision Quality International which helps leaders make and cause better decisions through training and consulting. He also co-founded and managed Outcome Software, a firm creating web-based deal-management software for large corporations. Although Korver was co-inventor for six patents (five pending) in web-based decision analytics, one of his most memorable achievements was skillful handling of ethics in business.

Korver entered the field of decision analysis and ethics in 1990 as a doctoral student of Professor Howard. He then built two consulting and training firms, The Decision Company, in 1994, and Decision Quality International, in 2003. Both firms helped businesses make strategic decisions with unique tools and materials based on decision analysis. Like Howard, Korver has a reputation for adeptly drawing a bright line between ethical and unethical behavior – and using ethical decision making to transform work and life for the better

Ronald A. Howard

Ron Howard, a professor at Stanford University, began teaching ethics nearly three decades ago. For many years, his ethics courses have been filled to capacity. He has made a name for himself among students for helping them recognize distinctions about right and wrong they had never before considered. Never one to stay quiet in the face of flimsy logic, he is a keen advisor about ethical decisions in work and life.

Howard is professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, he has been since 1980 the director of the department’s Decisions and Ethics Center, which examines the efficacy and ethics of social arrangements.

Since the 1960s, as a professor at both Stanford and MIT, Howard defined the profession of decision analysis. He then applied his principles to projects ranging from investment planning and research strategy to hurricane seeding and nuclear-waste isolation. His experience has given him the perspective and know-how for tackling the most difficult ethical issues of the day.

Howard was also a founding director and long-time chairman of Strategic Decisions Group (SDG), a firm specializing in decision-making processes in the pharmaceutical, electric utilities, automotive, and other industries. The author of three books and dozens of technical papers, he is professor by courtesy in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.