Institute for Ethical Leadership

The Institute for Ethical Leadership is dedicated to the study of ethics in leadership and business. We teach courses and offer programs for students and practitioners that cultivate the knowledge, imagination, and motivation to exercise ethical and effective leadership.

To build better leaders for a better world.

The IEL Welcomes Dr. Danny Underwood II

The IEL is pleased to welcome Danny Underwood as the Mark and Rosemary Carawan postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Ethical Leadership. Danny is from St. Louis, MO. He received his BA and MA in Philosophy from the University of Missouri – St. Louis and his PhD in Philosophy from Rutgers University with a graduate certificate in Africana studies. His areas of specialization are political philosophy, ethics/applied ethics, and Africana philosophy. His dissertation, “Prosecutors: Discretion, Distrust, and Corrective Transparency,” uses the role of prosecutor to explore an application of fiduciary theory to the discretionary authority of public officials, the effect of the public’s distrust on the legitimacy of public institutions, and the potential of government transparency to counteract the public’s distrust. His work aims to highlight the often-ignored moral limits on the decision-making of public officials and to make their activity visible to the public. Danny is profoundly concerned with social justice and the ethics of conflict and peace. One branch of his research concerns the moral urgency of reparations for descendants of slavery, Jim Crow, and other forms of racialized oppression. Another concerns a shift from methodological individualism in the ethics of conflict (which focuses on self-defense by just combatants against unjust aggression) to relational ethics (which focuses on the future relationship between combatants after the conflict has ended). While at the IEL, Danny plans to expand his research into the areas of business ethics and leadership ethics. For instance, he is concerned with the ethical considerations of public-private partnerships and government contracting: Are government contractors fiduciaries to the public like public officials? How should the moral constraints on these firms differ from those fully private ones? How should leaders of contracting firms balance their loyalty to their immediate stakeholders and the public? In addition to his research, Danny will assist with developing and implementing IEL programs and teach the undergraduate business ethics course. 

Dr. Tobey K. Scharding Wins the Best Paper Award

Dr. Scharding won the best paper award at the 2024 Society for Business Ethics Meeting in Chicago. The title of her paper was “Risk, Ruin, and Redemptive Mitigation.” Using the doctrine of double effect, her paper discusses when investing in risky businesses is unethical. Scholars have offered accounts of when people may not invest in companies based on the businesses’ goods or services but not their relative riskiness. Small investors can suffer ruinous harm, though, because of institutional investments in very risky businesses. The doctrine of double effect, in turn, has been developed for practical use in business ethics but has not been applied to questions about investing. Scharding offers a novel interpretation of this doctrine with two implications for investing ethics. First, decision-makers may not pursue expected benefits that impose risks on others without trying to mitigate those risks. Second, investors may never influence others to invest in risky businesses when the investors’ ability to benefit from the investments entails the risk of ruinous harm to others.

The IEL and RBS Alumni in London

The IEL was pleased to work with the RBS advancement team this summer on a program for our London alums on The Challenges of AI in Financial Services. Dean Lei Lei hosted the event, and IEL Director Joanne Ciulla chaired a distinguished panel of practitioners. The discussants were Andy Blight, Managing Director and Chief Auditor of Risk at Citigroup; Mark Carawan, Board Member and Chair, Board Audit Committee, The Bank of London Group; and James Turner, former Board Member and Group Chief Financial Officer, Prudential PLC.