Why Business Leaders Need to Understand Their Algorithms; Harvard Business Review, November 19, 2019

Mike Walsh, Harvard Business Review; Why Business Leaders Need to Understand Their Algorithms

"Leaders will be challenged by shareholders, customers, and regulators on what they optimize for. There will be lawsuits that require you to reveal the human decisions behind the design of your AI systems, what ethical and social concerns you took into account, the origins and methods by which you procured your training data, and how well you monitored the results of those systems for traces of bias or discrimination. Document your decisions carefully and make sure you understand, or at the very least trust, the algorithmic processes at the heart of your business.

Simply arguing that your AI platform was a black box that no one understood is unlikely to be a successful legal defense in the 21st century. It will be about as convincing as “the algorithm made me do it.”"

CBS Report on Moonves Shows Epic Failure of Corporate Governance; The New York Times, December 4, 2018

James B. Stewart, The New York Times; CBS Report on Moonves Shows Epic Failure of Corporate Governance

[Kip Currier: Another example of toxic organizational culture--at multiple levels--that's also a "teachable moment" case study on the need for ethical leadership.

It's also (another) call for action and responsibility by Board members in all kinds of organizations--for profit and non-profit:

If you see (or reasonably suspect) something illicit, illegal, or unethical is occurring within your organization, say something!

You have an ethical duty to act. Not to cover up, turn away your gaze, or enable.

Ask tough questions. Demand answers. Report concerns and observations to outside parties when you can't get answers or information from within.

Do your duty. Do the right thing.

Even if it's hard.]

"As a draft report prepared by CBS’s outside lawyers now makes clear, many of the company’s employees, including high-ranking executives and even members of its board, were aware of the former chief executive Leslie Moonves’s alleged sexual misconduct and subsequent efforts to conceal it.

Yet no one acted to stop him — and the repercussions for that failure are likely to reverberate at CBS for years.

“A culture where this behavior could have gone unchecked for so long with so much knowledge is really troubling,” said Charles M. Elson, an expert on corporate governance at the University of Delaware. “This is a disaster for CBS shareholders. There’s been no other #MeToo incident with this kind of negative impact” on a major American company...

Members of corporate boards, senior executives and even rank-and-file employees have a duty of loyalty — to the company, not its chief executive. They’re required by corporate law, company policy and in many cases their employment contracts to report misconduct to the board."

Elon Musk Details ‘Excruciating’ Personal Toll of Tesla Turmoil; The New York Times, August 16, 2018

David Gelles, James B. Stewart, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Kate Kelly, The New York Times; Elon Musk Details ‘Excruciating’ Personal Toll of Tesla Turmoil

"Mr. Musk said that “to the best of my knowledge,” there is “no active search right now.” But people familiar with the matter said a search is underway, and one person said it had intensified in the wake of Mr. Musk’s tweets. 

[The Tesla board “now must ask a sensitive but vital question,” our columnist writes. “What was Mr. Musk’s state of mind” when he tweeted?] 

In response to questions for this article, Tesla provided a statement that it attributed to its board, excluding Elon Musk. “There have been many false and irresponsible rumors in the press about the discussions of the Tesla board,” the statement said. “We would like to make clear that Elon’s commitment and dedication to Tesla is obvious. Over the past 15 years, Elon’s leadership of the Tesla team has caused Tesla to grow from a small start-up to having hundreds of thousands of cars on the road that customers love, employing tens of thousands of people around the world, and creating significant shareholder value in the process.”

Mr. Musk said he had no plans to relinquish his dual roles as chairman and chief executive.

But, he added, “if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now.”"

U.S. lawmakers demand investigation of $100 price hike of lifesaving EpiPens; Washington Post, 8/23/16

Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post; U.S. lawmakers demand investigation of $100 price hike of lifesaving EpiPens:

"The medication itself isn’t expensive. Analysts calculate that the dosage contained in a single pen is worth about $1. It’s the company’s proprietary pen injector that makes up the bulk of the cost...

A profile in Fortune in 2015 described her rise in colorful terms:

Bresch, a 46-year-old who’s spent more than half her life at Mylan, has steered the company’s transformation from a quirky outfit run out of a West Virginia trailer to a global operator with 30,000 employees in 145 countries. Born into politics—her father, Joe Manchin, is a longtime West Virginia Democratic stalwart who’s now a U.S. senator—Bresch has mastered the regulatory world. Since becoming CEO in 2012, she’s overseen a major revenue increase; Mylan projects sales of up to $10.1 billion this year, up from $6.1 billion in 2011…

Under Bresch’s leadership, Mylan has also stumbled through a series of ethically messy mishaps and public relations gaffes. Mylan’s inversion took place just as uproar over the tactic reached a fever pitch on Capitol Hill. (Among the politicians who denounced the move was Bresch’s own father, though he later changed his mind.) Critics have called out the company for unusually high executive pay packages, questionable use of company jets, and murky relationships with board members. Then there’s “the Heather Bresch situation,” as she herself calls it, a scandal surrounding her executive MBA credentials—when you Google her name, the episode still ranks even higher than her official Mylan bio."