The Moral Advantage--How to Succeed in Business by Doing the Right Thing

William Damon

Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
San Francisco

Copyright © 2004 by William Damon

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Photograph of Dame Anita Roddick on page 76 taken by Brian Moody.

Photograph of Mike Markkula on page 93 taken by Charles Barry for Santa Clara University.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Damon, William, 1944
   The moral advantage : how to succeed in business by doing the right thing / by
      William Damon
      p.   cm.
   Includes bibliographical references and index.
   Contents: Introduction: Purpose and success in business—The moral advantage
      —Generative morality:
      Acts of creation—Empathic morality and the Golden Rule—Business ethics
      that come naturally— Philanthropy in business: Doing it right—Forging a
      moral identity in business.
   ISBN 1-57675-206-2
     1. Business ethics. 2. Success in business—Moral and ethical aspects.
   3. Social responsibility of business. 4. Industrial management—Moral and
   ethical aspects. 5. Organizational behavior—Moral and ethical aspects.
   6. Businesspeople—Interviews. 7. Successful people. I. Title: How to succeed
   in business by doing the right thing. II. Title.
   HF5387.D26   2004
   174'.5––dc22                                                                         2004041147

Project Manager: Katherine Silver, BookMatters; Copyeditor: Amy Smith Bell; Proofreader: Mike Mollett; Designer/Compositor: Bea Hartman, BookMatters; Indexer: Ken DellaPenta

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To Sir John Templeton
visionary businessman and philanthropist

Other Books by William Damon

Noble Purpose: The Joy of Living a Meaningful Life (2003)

Bringing in a New Era in Character Education (2002)

Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet (2001) (with Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

The Youth Charter: How Communities Can Work Together to Raise Standards for All Our Children (1997)

Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in America’s Homes and Schools (1995)

Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment (1992) (with Anne Colby)

The Moral Child: Nurturing Children’s Natural Moral Growth (1990)

Self-Understanding in Childhood and Adolescence (1988) (with Daniel Hart)

Social and Personality Development: Infancy through Adolescence (1983)

The Social World of the Child (1977)

About the Author

William Damon is Professor of Education at Stanford University; Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; and Director of the Center on Adolescence at Stanford. Prior to coming to California, he was University Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Human Development at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Damon has written widely on moral commitment at all stages of life. For the past seven years, Damon has been working on a collaborative project (with Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) aimed at fostering excellence and social responsibility in key domains of contemporary work. The domains include business, journalism, the sciences, the arts, higher education, and philanthropy. As part of this broad “Good Work” project (www.goodworkproject.org), Damon has teamed up with a group of leading journalists (the Washington-based Committee for Concerned Journalists) to create a “traveling curriculum” in journalism studies (see www.journalism.org). This training program has already brought principles of good work to hundreds of print, broadcast, and Internet newsrooms.

Damon received his B.A. from Harvard and his Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. Between college and graduate school, Damon spent two years in New York City working with disadvantaged families and their children, an experience that convinced him of the enormous potential of all young people. Damon’s research and writing in human development has been aimed at understanding how this potential can best be realized in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

Damon has received awards and grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Spencer Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the New York Community Trust, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. He has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Education. Damon is married with three children and travels widely for lecturing, recreation, and exploration.