Business Ethics: Decision Making for Personal Integrity & Social Responsibility

About the Author

Laura Hartman

Laura Pincus Hartman is a professor emerita at DePaul University and executive director of the School of Choice Education Organization, a U.S.-based nonprofit that she cofounded, which oversees the School of Choice/l’Ecole de Choix, a unique trilingual elementary school in Haiti that provides high-quality leadership development education to children living in extreme conditions of poverty.

From 2015–2017, Professor Hartman also served as the inaugural director of the Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy and clinical professor of Business Ethics in the Department of Organizational Behavior. She also was an associated professor at the Kedge Business School (Marseille, France). Professor Hartman held a number of roles at DePaul University over her almost three-decade career there, including associate vice president for Academic Affairs, Vincent de Paul Professor of Business Ethics at DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business, and director of its Institute for Business and Professional Ethics. Hartman also has taught at INSEAD (France), HEC (France), the Université Paul Cezanne Aix Marseille III, the University of Toulouse, and the Grenoble Graduate School of Business. Hartman is past president of the Society for Business Ethics, was co-chair of its Committee on International Collaborations, and established and directed its professional mentorship program.

In the private sector, concurrent to her academic work, Hartman was director of External Partnerships for Zynga.Org (2009–2012), through which Zynga players of FarmVille, Words with Friends, and other online games have contributed over $20 million toward both domestic and international social causes. From 2009–2011, she represented DePaul University on the Worldwide Vincentian Family’s Vincentian Board for Haiti and was instrumental in the hands-on design and implementation of a micro-development, finance, and education system for people living in poverty in Haiti.

Hartman is a thought leader in leadership and ethical decision making, and her work has resulted in the publication of more than 80 articles, cases, and books and demonstrates the potential for innovative and Marketing Communications Department, Questrom School of Business profitable partnerships to alleviate poverty while providing measurable value to all stakeholders involved. A winner of the Microsoft CreateGOOD award at Cannes Lions (2015), named one of Ethisphere’s 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics, and one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business (2014), Hartman serves as an advisor to a number of start-ups and has consulted with multinational for-profits, nonprofits, and educational institutions. She was invited to BAInnovate’s inaugural UnGrounded lab and has been named to Fast Company’s “League of Extraordinary Women.”

Hartman graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University and received her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School. She divides her time between Haiti and Sint Maarten and has been a mother to two daughters.

Joseph DesJardins

Joseph DesJardins is professor emeritus at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Minnesota where he held the Ralph Gross Chair in Business and the Liberal Arts. His other books include An Introduction to Business Ethics; Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy; Environmental Ethics: Concepts, Policy & Theory; Contemporary Issues in Business Ethics (coeditor with John McCall); and Business, Ethics, and the Environment: Imagining a Sustainable Future. He has served as president and executive director of the Society for Business Ethics and has published and lectured extensively in the areas of business ethics, environmental ethics, and sustainability. He received his BA from Southern Connecticut State University and his MA and PhD from the University of Notre Dame.

Chris MacDonald

Chris MacDonald is an associate professor and director of the Ted Rogers Leadership Centre at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management in Toronto, Canada, and a senior nonresident fellow at Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics. His peer-reviewed publications range across business ethics, professional ethics, bioethics, the ethics of technology, and moral philosophy, and he is coauthor of a best-selling textbook called The Power of Critical Thinking (5th Canadian Edition, 2019). He is cofounder and coeditor of the Business Ethics Journal Review and co-author of the online Encyclopedia of Business Ethics. He is perhaps best known for his highly respected blog, The Business Ethics Blog, which he has written since 2006.