The challenges facing Paul Levy, the embattled CEO of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, highlight the issues faced by many leaders: once in hot water, how to start on the road to recovery. The problem is that many leaders don’t appreciate the nature of the ethics risks they face and what is in fact …
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Business Laws & Ethics
Why a Policy for Making Decisions? How often have you heard Board members assert that they’d made a decision, when they really hadn’t — all they had done was talk about a topic for a long while? Or, how often have some Board members or the Executive Director asserted that a decision had been made, …
How involved in management should your board be? Experts often have very strong beliefs and feelings about what should be the extent of involvement of Board members in making top-level policies versus in implementing those policies in the day-to-day affairs of the organization. Those experts usually assert that Board members should attend primarily to the …
When you ask Board members if they’ve been trained, it’s not uncommon that they’ll answer, “Yes”. But many times, they’ll be wrong. Board Orientation Board orientation is about the unique aspects of the organization. It might include introductions and team building among Board members, overviews of the organization’s products and services, celebration of the organization’s …
Talking with Mr. Blankfein About Placing Ethics First From the Wall Street Journal on May 5, 2010: “Frankly, at this point, we have to go with an open mind and determine what we may be doing wrong,” Mr. Blankfein told customers of its private-wealth-management business during a 30-minute conference call. “On a very microscopic level, …
Today in Boston the Board of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center today fined chief executive Paul Levy $50,000 for engaging in a personal relationship with an employee that over time “created an improper appearance and became a distraction within the hospital,” according to a statement by Board Chairman Stephen Kay. Mr. Levy has had a …
An Advisory Board (or Advisory Council or Advisory Committee) is a collection of people formed to advise members of a governing Board of Directors. The Advisory Board does not have formal authority. It cannot issue directives that must be followed as is the case with a governing Board. There seems to be an increasing number …