Higher Ground

How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World

By: Alison Taylor

Narrated by: Julia Anthony

Today's headlines are full of employee unrest over racial injustice, communities infuriated by corporate environmental impacts, staff anxiety over surveillance, 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 with rules and processes. Simply maximizing shareholder value while not breaking the law is no longer an option, but we've never been so confused about what it means to do the right thing.

In this eye-opening, indispensable book, NYU ethics professor Alison Taylor argues that amid stakeholder demands and transparency pressures, we can no longer treat ethics as a legal and reputational defense mechanism. Leaders at Davos and the Business Roundtable have called for a new corporate responsibility paradigm, but how to implement their ideas remains an open question as organizations struggle in an atmosphere of heightened expectations and intense suspicion. Offering vivid stories and examples, Taylor brings this complex, risky environment alive to provide a blueprint for how leaders should rethink and reshape their practices.

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

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation (P)2024 Ascent Audio

Brilliantly delivered - Timely insights from a qualified thought leader

NYU Stern Professor Alison Taylor provides a master class.  Corporate responsibility, but not at any price.
 Fair, balanced, and thoughtful throughout. Will certainly be required reading in every business school by the time you finish this most glowing review.
 Standing ready to pre-order your next project.

Let’s get a big picture on what’s happening with business ethics and the speed of modern tech.

The advent of technological speed has highlighted the great and growing disconnect in business ethics. The faster we move in the digital era, the harder it is to maintain our connections - to self, other, and community.

This book examines a story of separation that, unexamined, lies at the root of all kinds of awful hijinks in the business world. Greed, fear, mistrust, and systemic domination all stem from this common disconnect.

If we want to bring business back to a more ethical place with the potential for shared prosperity, we must understand the disconnections, and what will happen if we keep pressing the pedal to the metal with unconsciousness & technological speed.

Slow down to speed up. We willl need to reconnect to bring business back in service to the thriving of life.

Great book. Terrible reader.

Great content but every single sentence is read with the same tone, pace, cadence, etc. I’m not convinced this is a human reader. It really sounds like a machine read it.