Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World

An indispensable guide to help companies navigate the new era of ethical challenges and risks in a volatile global landscape.

Today’s headlines teem with employee unrest over racial injustice, communities infuriated by corporate environmental impacts, staff anxiety over surveillance, public outrage over corruption in business, and discoveries of child labor in supply chains. We’ve traveled far and fast from the old world of business ethics, where black-and-white concerns about bribery and fraud could be addressed via rules and processes. Simply maximizing shareholder value while not breaking the law is no longer a tenable approach, but we’ve never been so confused about what it means to do the right thing--and why it’s so important.

In this eye-opening, essential book, NYU Stern ethics professor Alison Taylor argues that amid stakeholder demands and transparency pressures, we can no longer treat ethics as merely a legal and reputational defense mechanism. Leaders at Davos and the Business Roundtable have called for a new corporate responsibility paradigm, but organizations struggle to implement these ideas in an atmosphere of heightened expectations and intense suspicion. Offering vivid stories and examples from years working in anti-corruption and advising companies on ethics, Taylor brings this complex, risky environment alive to provide a blueprint for how leaders can rethink and reshape their practices. How can CEOs cut through the noise to set robust environmental and social priorities? When should they speak out on contentious social and political issues--and how? What does it really take to build a healthy organizational culture? How are we to approach corporate values when society itself is so divided?

Higher Ground shows leaders how business can navigate this messy paradigm shift, build trust, and achieve long-term strategic advantage in a turbulent world.

Alison Taylor is a clinical professor at NYU Stern School of Business and the Executive Director at Ethical Systems, a research collaboration of prominent business school professors working on ethical culture founded by prominent social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. She has spent decades advising large multinationals on risk, corruption, sustainability, and organizational culture.

Connect with Alison Taylor on LinkedIn and at NYU Stern School of Business.