An Interview With Edward Sylvan
Our purpose in writing our book, “Business Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know,” is to empower people to be able to do what aligns with their ethics in their lives. Our book is written in an accessible short question-and-answer style. “Business Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know” provides engaging and readable introductions to the basic principles of business ethics, and how to live them practically in the real world.
If you are facing an ethical dilemma at work, or elsewhere, please pick it up. Ethical dilemmas can be as simple as being given an unethical order, to feeling uncomfortable with the direction of a company and your career.
As part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing J.S. Nelson.
J.S. Nelson is a professor of law and expert legal consultant with a deep, diverse background bridging law and business school. She is a visiting professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of the new book “Business Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know.”
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I was raised by a single mother who was an immigrant to this country. I have benefitted tremendously from people who shaped my career, and I want to pay that forward.
I started in finance after graduating on scholarship from Yale, and I went back to Harvard Law School to be a lawyer. I have worked for the federal courts at the trial level, the appellate level, and as staff counsel to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. I then became a prosecutor and a commercial litigator.
As I worked in various jobs with businesspeople to help them understand what their legal liabilities might be, students headed to business school requested that I teach classes on the subject. I started teaching in business school, and my classes were immediately enrolled to the point at which I was asked to teach additional versions for new programs. I found a passion for teaching people about ethics and how to navigate the business world: I taught in business schools for nearly ten years before teaching in law school for most of the last five years.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
I would say that it was less a book, than the author of a book that changed my life. My late co-author, Lynn Stout, was my Corporations professor at Harvard Law School. She kept in touch with me for more than a decade and a half afterward, pushing me to become an academic and to share the material that we were working on with the public. You may know Lynn Stout from her other books such as “The Shareholder Value Myth,” and “Cultivating Conscience: How Good Laws Make Good People.”
Lynn died of cancer in 2018, with our book “Business Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know,” in progress. It has been an honor, and a labor of love, to finish it and to allow people to continue to hear her voice on so many of these subjects.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your career? What lesson or take away did you learn from that?
I would say that I have made the mistake that many other people make, and that too many of us feel that we have to make. I spent too long and too much energy at times working in places that did not live their stated values, and not doing, as institutions, what they said that they were supposed to do.
Like so many others, I felt trapped. I was trapped economically, psychologically, and in so many other ways, doing things and living a life that I did not want to be living. We are the accumulation of how we spend our time and energy. When we spend our time and energy doing things that do not feel as though they contribute to making the world the place you want it to be, that can be draining and demoralizing.
In fact, if you are pushed too hard out of shape over time from who you want to be, you may no longer be able to look in the mirror at the end of the day. Research shows that being who you do not want to be has all kinds of physical health consequences, in addition to the psychological and spiritual ones.
It was a revelation to me, as a child of an immigrant to this country who did not come from resources, that I had other options, and that I could do things a different way. And that I would be happier, healthier, and more successful for it.
The research and data are laid out in our book. But I would encourage other people to see that same realization as empowering. Too often now, people are looking for meaning, and not finding it in their work and everyday lives. It’s part of the Great Resignation, part of why millennials seem to have so much less tolerance for hypocrisy than previous generations, and part of the coming revolution to return again to the dignity of work and the joy that working in the right organizations, for the right reasons, and for the right purposes, can bring.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
Our purpose in writing our book, “Business Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know,” is to empower people to be able to do what aligns with their ethics in their lives. Our book is written in an accessible short question-and-answer style. “Business Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know” provides engaging and readable introductions to the basic principles of business ethics, and how to live them practically in the real world.
If you are facing an ethical dilemma at work, or elsewhere, please pick it up. Ethical dilemmas can be as simple as being given an unethical order, to feeling uncomfortable with the direction of a company and your career.
The book succinctly surveys materials from moral philosophy, behavioral science, and corporate law, and shares practical advice. We cover a wide array of essential topics not available together in resources elsewhere including the legal status of corporations, major ethical traps in modern business, negotiations, whistleblowing and liability, and best practices.
This book needs to exist. We also deliberately set it at a very reasonable price point, to get it into people’s hands. It is an invaluable resource for dealing with ethical dilemmas, and should be your go-to guide.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
I think that some of the most interesting stories are about how great organizations can keep themselves great. We look at human behavior at both the individual as well as at the organizational level.
Business ethics, as legendary researcher Dr. Linda Treviño likes to say, is like a garden. We have to put the effort in and tend the garden as we go along. We get what we grow.
A company that seems to be doing this well is Costco, a warehouse club that operates on memberships. Costco grew quickly from its founding in 1983 to become, by 2015, the second-largest retailer in the world behind Walmart. The company has a particularly strong and unusual culture.
Costco employees can recite the company’s Code of Ethics by heart. The first four principles of “Our Code of Ethics” are:
1. “Obey the law.”
2. “Take care of our members.”
3. “Take care of our employees.”
4. “Respect our suppliers.”
According to the rest of the section, “[i]f we do these four things throughout our organization, then we will achieve our ultimate goal, which is to: 5. Reward our shareholders.”
Costco’s Code fleshes out what each of these principles means.
The company’s Code of Ethics ends with the question “What do Costco’s Mission Statement and Code of Ethics have to do with you?” The company’s short answer is displayed in bold, all-caps with an explanation mark: “EVERYTHING!”
The company then explains: “By always choosing to do the right thing, you will build your own self-esteem, increase your chances for success and make Costco more successful, too.” This foundation of “each of us working together and contributing our best,” is what “makes Costco the great company it is today and lays the groundwork for what we will be tomorrow.”
Good leaders make the determination how to run the company, and then communicate it on a regular basis, and with repercussions, to everyone in the company so that they all understand it. Honesty and doing the right thing cannot be the responsibility of management alone. Every level of the company should understand what the rules are, and every employee in the company should be mortified if the company and its people don’t do what they are supposed to do.
The attitude has to be pervasive throughout the organization. As the legends of Costco have said point-blank about misconduct: “We don’t do that kind of stuff around here! Period!”
A major challenge for Costco will be what happens when its co-founders, and the people who knew them (such as the 2020 CEO who began working at the company in 1984), are no longer around to guide its culture and insist on such actions. It remains to be seen whether the next generations of Costco’s leadership continue to steward the company in the same manner.
But we know this recipe. We know how to get consistent profits above and beyond the competition by using ethics as a competitive advantage. Good people want to work for these companies. Good people want to contribute and innovate for these companies. Good people will agree to be paid less and do more for these companies. And they will stay around if they believe in the mission, and how that mission is actually carried out.
In these times in which the labor market is tight, that should be getting managers’ attention. That’s a secret to being successful, and consistently successful, over the long term.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
It was Lynn Stout, my late co-author, who really believed in this book and wanted it out in the hands of the public from the beginning. Even in her last days, dying of cancer and knowing that her time on this Earth would be short, she spent her days writing and helping to get the word out.
I am humbled to have known Lynn, and to be able to carry on the work to which she literally gave her life. This book had to come into the world and be in your hands.
Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
I have taught literally thousands of students. I can’t tell you how often I receive personal notes thanking me for what we talk about in class, and how meaningful it is to feel as though they have a path forward, and know how to act on their ethics in difficult situations.
I also talk with students about, and describe in the book, the work that researcher and teacher Dr. Mary Gentile has done on Giving Voice to Values, which is a method to get changes needed in the world without getting fired. Professor Robert Prentice and his team at the University of Texas at Austin have put together free short videos outlining the techniques, and I would send readers there for the basics and how to practice. The link to those free videos is here.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
Yes, the three things I would say are:
(1) Create psychological safety. You need to hear what your people are telling you in order to be able to get ahead of serious problems within the company that can metastasize and take organizations down.
(2) Foster and reward a “Speak-Up” culture. Make sure that people feel comfortable using the language of ethics in the workplace, and that management specifically invites, responses positively to, and encourages feedback and new ways of doing things. That’s how you will get some of your best innovations, and the diverse voices that management says that it wants to contribute to growing the bottom line over the long term.
(3) Never engage in, or permit anyone within your organization to engage in, retaliation. Period. That is death to the ideas and ethical well-being of organizations. And the statistics on retaliation are astonishing. Nearly 80 percent of whistleblowers are retaliated against within the first three weeks and 90 percent report retaliation within six months. Not only is that outright illegal, but it drives everyone else out from your company as well. People vote with their feet. That is the beginning of a sinking ship, and it gets harder and harder to turn the ship around once people see how others are being treated.
Some companies even develop tracking systems specifically to promote whistleblowers and others who report within the company. Ninety-two percent of employees report internally within their companies before going to regulators, even when their legal rights are better protected by going directly to regulators instead. Why would they do that? Because study after study shows that they are overwhelming motivated by moral reasons and commitment to the company, and not personal financial gain. Those are the voices that you most want within your company and leadership. They should be your future. You need to promote them, empower them, and keep them onboard. They are often working longer, harder, and with more commitment than anyone else.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
By definition, a leader is someone who brings other people along with them. They do that by both having a vision, but also by listening to the concerns of the people within the organization, and addressing them.
A leader who does not listen will not last long without abusing his or her grip on power. And he or she will cause significant damage to the organization along the way.
We have an entire section of the book on leadership and what can happen to people in positions of power. Often, the wrong people are the ones promoting themselves most within the organization. Organizations should be looking for this. As distinguished researcher Dr. Ann Tenbrunsel has described, organizations should not be picking the people with their hands always in the air to lead. That leads to some very dangerous things. They should be looking for the people with the capacity to lead, but who are not about promoting themselves. Leaders should be about promoting the organization, and the values of the organization, to make profits and get ahead.
Research on major white-collar crime and fraud bear this out. People who engage in fraud and abuse tend to have certain profiles that match the pathology of constant self-promotion and lack of actual empathy for others.
The best leaders have the opposite qualities. They are genuinely empathetic and interested in others. They have a genuine interest in service, for the sake of service, and not for self-promotion. They create and build extraordinary and durable organizations. Those are the true leaders of the future, and they tend to do better over the long term when they keep those qualities central to their leadership.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
Let me do even better here, and send readers to the video that I have recorded about the five things people should know about business ethics. These are the things that everyone should know when they first start, and I give examples of each.
My “5 Things” recording is here.
I also have a video that introduces these ideas and what people should take away from them. That video is here. Please turn on the sound at the bottom of the box when you get to the screen.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I am not sure that this is so much of a quote, as a truism. We are how we choose to spend our time. That becomes our life. Be the person you want to be. Choose how you spend your time, and what you chose to invest in, with the precious life and moments that we are given in the world.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
It would be powerful to have religious leaders read the book and understand how the same values, and understanding ethical questions as ethical questions, permeate both religions, and our search for meaning in the workplace. One of the sections of the book that I most enjoyed writing was the one on moral philosophy. We have thousands of years of thought and traditions to draw upon.
Most of us have a good ethical compass and know what to do in situations. What is difficult is allowing ourselves to act on those ethics in the modern workplace. But we can do that. It is not only empowering for us personally but better for organizations and our world, that we do so.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
In addition to my profile at Harvard Business School, readers are welcome to follow my work through my personal website at “jsnelson.net.”
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Harvard Business School’s JS Nelson Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.