Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution

With this strong debut, Chesnut, general counsel of Airbnb, confronts a question he sees facing today’s most successful tech companies: having built strong services, products, and workforces during their rise to the top, how do they now use those tools ethically? Paying lip service to “values” and “accountability,” he says, is no longer enough; organizations need to make a concerted effort to articulate and prioritize their values, develop rules to ensure those values are implemented, and then make sure they’re respected throughout the company. Having productive leaders and good intentions isn’t enough; bad actors can destroy the best of efforts, Chesnut writes, and when the world is watching, trust is critical. Chesnut covers navigating the corporate culture shock that ensues when an ethical breach goes public, managing the aftereffects of bad behavior, identifying common integrity issues, avoiding issues in the first place, and implementing both clear and safe whistleblowing processes and appropriate consequences for violators. This is the rare fully realized look at not just what integrity means in the context of business, but how to make it second nature in the workplace. Business leaders should take note. (June)