You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘current work’ category.
“What we mean by ‘being given being and action by something bigger than oneself’ is being committed in a way that shapes one’s being and actions so that they are in the service of realizing something beyond one’s personal concerns for oneself – beyond a direct personal payoff. As they are acted on, such actions create something to which others can also be committed and have the sense that their lives are being given being and action by something bigger than themselves. This is leadership!”
https://ssrn.com/abstract=1585976
Werner Erhard, Michael C. Jensen, Steve Zaffron, Jeri Echeverria
“The profound impact that Werner Erhard has had, and continues to have, on culture and society is a manifestation of an incredible insight that Erhard has been making available to the public for decades: the experience of being. This book (Speaking Being: Werner Erhard, Martin Heidegger, and a New Possibility of Being Human) presents that experience for the first time–both through a transcript of an actual course led by Erhard, along with a study of his methodology for delivering that experience. On display are spectacular moments where Erhard exercises what he has sometimes described as ruthless compassion, and like all forms of compassion, at work is a fundamental motivating desire to alleviate the suffering of others.” James R. Doty, M.D.Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery at Stanford University:
Behavior that lacks integrity leads to value destruction. This paper analyzes some common beliefs, actions, and activities in finance that are inconsistent with being a person or a firm of integrity. Each of these beliefs leads to a system that lacks integrity, i.e., one that is not whole and complete and therefore creates unworkability and destroys value. Focusing on these phenomena from the integrity viewpoint, the authors argue, makes it possible for managers to focus on the value that can be created by putting the system back in integrity and correcting the non-value maximizing equilibrium that exists in capital markets. Overall, this paper summarizes a purely positive theory of integrity that has no normative elements whatsoever, and demonstrates how it applies to both individuals and organizations. In effect, integrity is a factor of production just like knowledge, technology, labor, and capital, but it is undistinguished—and its affect (by its presence or absence) is huge. Key concepts include:
- Integrity matters. Not because it is virtuous, but because it creates workability.
- Workability increases the opportunity for performance, and maximum workability is necessary for realizing maximum value.
- Integrity thus becomes a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for value maximization-a proposition that should become an important element in every finance course in every business school.
– The text above is as stated in Harvard Business School – Working Knowledge – The Thinking That Leads – about the working paper by Werner Erhard and Michael C. Jensen entitled, Putting Integrity into Finance: A Purely Positive Approach
Columbia University’s Center on Capitalism and Society recently announced its new issue of Capitalism & Society Journal (May 2017), featuring the paper “Putting Integrity Into Finance: A Purely Positive Approach,” authored by Werner Erhard and Michael C. Jensen.
Unique among economics journals, Capitalism & Society focuses on what makes capitalism dynamic: innovation and entrepreneurship. Topics include ownership, corporate control, entry and venture capital, the discovery process, and commercial performance. While these topics have been studied from a micro-perspective, Capitalism & Society breaks new ground as the only mainstream forum that discusses how capitalism works from a broad social science perspective. Editors of this peer-reviewed journal include some of the best-known and most widely-published scholars in the fields of economics, business, law, and sociology, such as Jeffrey Sachs, Saskia Sassen, Richard Nelson, Robert Shiller, and Nobel Prize winning economists Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Edmund Phelps.
Click here to access the new issue of Capitalism & Society.
The Impact of Integrity As A Positive Phenomenon
We define integrity as the state of being whole, complete, unbroken, unimpaired, sound, in perfect condition – clearly, the definition of a positive phenomenon. As is the case with any positive phenomenon – for example, gravity – there are effects caused by actions related to that phenomenon. The action of stepping off a cliff will, as a result of gravity being a positive phenomenon, cause an effect (whether one likes
the effect or not). Likewise, action that is consistent or inconsistent with integrity will, as a result of integrity being a positive phenomenon, also cause an effect (again, whether one likes the effect or not).
When integrity is revealed and dealt with as a positive phenomenon as it is in our model, the relation between integrity, workability and performance is as follows:
1. Maximum workability for an object, system, person, or other human entity (such as a partnership or corporation) is a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for maximum performance,
2. Integrity as we distinguish and define it (the state of being whole, complete, unbroken, sound, in perfect condition) is a necessary (and sufficient) condition for maximum workability,
3. It follows that for an object, system, person, or other human entity integrity is a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for maximum performance, and
4. It follows that as integrity declines, the opportunity for performance declines.
5. This leads to the empirically refutable proposition that, ceteris paribus, as integrity declines, performance declines.
From “Putting Integrity Into Finance, A Purely Positive Approach” by Werner Erhard and Michael C. Jensen; published in the Capitalism and Society Journal
The Center on Capitalism and Society published Werner Erhard and Michael C. Jensen’s paper, Putting Integrity Into Finance: A Purely Positive Approach in their May 2017 Journal, Capitalism and Society Volume 12, Issue 1.
“Integrity as we define it (or the lack thereof) on the part of individuals or organizations has enormous economic implications for value, productivity, and quality of life. Indeed, integrity is a factor of production as important as labor, capital, and technology. Without a clear, concise, and most importantly, an actionable definition of integrity, economics, finance and management are far less powerful than they can be.”
“Putting Integrity Into Finance: A Purely Positive Approach” by Werner Erhard and Michael C. Jensen Ph.D. Published by Columbia University’s Center On Capitalism and Society in their Journal: Capitalism and Society, Volume 12, Issue 1.
Werner Erhard in discussion with Professor Jonathan D. Moreno, April 2016 at the University of Pennsylvania.
“When my integrity is lacking, I am clear that I just got to be a bit smaller as a person. That keeps me working on my integrity. And the thing about integrity is it’s a mountain with no top.”
Werner Erhard in The New York Times, November 29, 2015
“One can inquire into being a leader and the effective exercise of leadership from a number of perspectives, with each perspective providing insights not contributed by the others. …leader and leadership can also be examined from the science of ontology. Ontology examines leader and leadership from the perspective of the nature and function of being as it relates to being a leader and the impact of being on one’s effectiveness in the exercise of leadership. While providing its own insights and testable propositions, the ontological perspective is complementary to the findings and insights we are aware of provided by the other perspectives. While the ontological perspective is less familiar for most of us than these other perspectives and therefore perhaps at first uncomfortable, the ontological perspective is uniquely powerful in providing access to the being of being a leader and the actions of the effective exercise of leadership as one’s natural self-expression.”
Erhard, W., Jensen, M., and Zaffron, S. (2015). Introductory Reading for Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model. Harvard Business School Negotiation, Organizations, and Market Research Papers
“Werner Erhard paced the aisle between rows of desks in a Toronto conference room. “If you’re going to be a leader, you’re going to have to have a very loose relationship with this thing you call ‘I’ or ‘me,’” he shouted. “Maybe that whole thing in me around which the universe revolves isn’t so central! Maybe life is not about the self but about self-transcendence! You got a problem with that?”
No one in the room had a problem with that. The desks were occupied by 27 name-tagged academics from around the world. And in the course of the day, a number of them would take the mike to pose what their instructor referred to as “yeah buts, how ‘bouts or what ifs” in response to his pronouncements – but no one had a problem with them.
Peter Haldeman – New York Times, November 29, 2015
“If you’re going to be a leader, you’re going to have to have a very loose relationship with this thing you call ‘I’ or ‘me’. Maybe that whole thing in me around which the universe revolves isn’t so central! Maybe life is not about the self but about self-transcendence.”
-Werner Erhard, The New York Times, November 28, 2015
“Without being a man or woman of integrity you can forget about being a leader. And, being a person of integrity is a never‑ending endeavor. Being a person of integrity is a mountain with no top – you have to learn to love the climb.”.
-Werner Erhard
By Werner Erhard and Michael C. Jensen
NBER Working Paper No. 19986
Issued in March 2014
NBER Program: Corporate Finance
Abstract: The seemingly never ending scandals in the world of finance with their damaging effects on value and human welfare (that continue unabated in spite of all the various efforts to curtail the behavior that results in those scandals) argues strongly for an addition to the current paradigm of financial economics. We summarize here our new theory of integrity that reveals integrity as a purely positive phenomenon with no normative aspects whatsoever. Adding integrity as a positive phenomenon to the paradigm of financial economics provides actionable access (rather than mere explanation with no access) to the source of the behavior that has resulted in those damaging effects on value and human welfare, thereby significantly reducing that behavior. More generally we argue that this addition to the paradigm of financial economics can create significant increases in economic efficiency and productivity. http://www.nber.org/papers/w19986
Sands Leadership Lecture Series
“Professor Michael Jensen and Werner Erhard, two extraordinary thinkers, engage in a conversation that explores groundbreaking access to being a leader and to the effective exercise of leadership as one’s natural self-expression.” -Simon Business School, University of Rochester
“Here’s my definition of a hero. A hero is an ordinary person given being and action by something bigger than themselves. One thing I’m sure about is I’m real ordinary. Yet I’ve had the chance to touch the lives of a lotta people.” From “Lunch with the FT: Werner Erhard“.
“An epistemological mastery (a from-the-stands mastery) of a subject leaves one knowing. An ontological mastery (an on-the-court mastery) of a subject leaves one being.”
-Werner Erhard, From Creating Leaders: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model
“The Editors of the “Handbook for Teaching Leadership” say the following in their introductory chapter: “How does one teach leadership in a way that not only informs [students] about leadership but also transforms them into actually being leaders?” (p. XXIV)
“The sole objective of our ontological/phenomenological approach to creating leaders is to leave students actually being leaders and exercising leadership effectively as their natural self-expression. By “natural self-expression” we mean a way of being and acting in any leadership situation that is a spontaneous and intuitive effective response to what one is dealing with.”
-From the Abstract for Creating Leaders: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model, by Werner Erhard, Michael C. Jensen and Kari Granger
Werner Erhard Quotes 