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The April 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review focuses on understanding and learning from failure. One article, " Good people often let bad things happen. Why?" by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrusel, features the five barriers to an ethical organization and confirms once again just how dangerous silence and hidden bias can be to corporations of any size.

The University of Virginia's Darden School of Business' Olsson Center for Applied Ethics has begun to develop a business ethics timeline of major U.S. ethics cases since the establishment of the Olsson Center in 1966 to the present.

In an issue of the Harvard Business Review devoted to "How to Fix Capitalism" the always stimulating Michael Porter dissects:
How Shared Value Differs from Corporate Social Responsibility. His thinking warrants close examination and consideration by policy-makers and business leaders alike.

Determining the effectiveness of ethics and compliance programs is not the same as auditing financial operations, but the internal audit function can be an equally valuable resource for ethics and compliance operations -- if and only if -- multidisciplinary expertise is applied to the assessment process. The internal audit needs more than input from accountants and lawyers to be truly effective.

A few years ago a survey of more than 1,600 physicians found that doctors said that what they think, and what they do, are too often, two different things.

The survey undertaken by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) showed that often what doctors actually do is very different from what they think they should do. Specifically, with regard to ordering unnecessary medical tests, managing conflict of interest and informing patients of conflicts of interest.

These ethical issues were identified as a key driver of the exponential growth in national health expenditures by Arnold S.Relman in COST CONTROL,. DOCTORS' ETHICS, AND. PATIENT CARE. Where he notes the costs of medical care depend critically on doctors because they order the tests, ...

Detailing a “new era” of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement, Lanny Breuer Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division in the US Department of Justice said that those worried about more aggressive anti-bribery enforcement “are right to be more concerned.” In prepared remarks, Breuer said, “Our FCPA enforcement is stronger than it’s ever been - and getting stronger.” He noted that in the past year, more than $1 billion in criminal penalties had been imposed in FCPA- related cases, the most ever in any single 12-month period.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) has adopted a new strategy for engaging underperforming public stock companies through private contacts and proxy actions rather than by posting a public “name-and-shame” Focus List.CalPERS, the California pension giant, long a loud voice in good governance and shareholder activism, says it will cease publishing its annual list of companies with poor governance practices, in favor of exerting behind-the-scenes pressure or engaging in proxy fights.

"Many people have argued that America has lost its moral compass, that we have what amounts to an ethics crisis in the country. They claim that we have become or are in danger of becoming a society that is self-centered, inward-focused, and uncaring about the plight of the rest of the world."