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On the Cusp: Between Strategy and Ethics
How do firms and public institutions regain greatness while wrestling with risk, disruption, and their responsibilities to investors, employees, and the public? When businesses and other organizations pursue their strategies, they inevitably run into ethical boundaries that don’t neatly align with their goals. On the Cusp: Between Strategy and Ethics is about what happens in that zone of collision where executives, policymakers, and citizens must decide whether to stretch the rules, redraw them, or change course altogether. Each episode takes up a concrete case, from shareholder primacy to AI, finance, and democratic accountability, asking a simple but uncomfortable question: what do “great” organizations owe the societies that can make their success more possible?
On the Cusp is hosted by Alfred Marcus, Professor at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. He has published several books including Comeback: Can Great Companies Rise Again? and Managing Business Ethics co-authored with Tim Hargrave. He has spent much of his career on the cusp between strategy and ethics and hopes to understand that fault line far better through this podcast series.
March 14, 2026
Billionaire Backlash
Giant companies, launch rockets into space, control satellite communication and develop era-defining AI technologies. But they are also seen as promot…
February 24, 2026
Money and Promises
In Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World, the distinguished banker, executive, and historian Paolo Zannoni examines the complex relat…
February 18, 2026
The Making of Modern Corporate Finance
In The Making of Modern Corporate Finance: A History of the Ideas and How They Help Build the Wealth of Nations (Columbia Business School Publishing, …
February 17, 2026
Saving Ourselves from Big Car
Streetwise: Saving Ourselves from Big Car (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2025) exposes how “Big Car”―the complex of companies in the automobile…
February 9, 2026
The Systems Leader
Since the start of this century, businesses have confronted a series of extreme and constant disruptions, including technological upheavals, a pandemi…
February 3, 2026
Reaching the Chasm
One of the greatest challenges facing any start-up is “crossing the chasm”: bridging the gap between early adopters and mass-market buyers. Yet many p…
February 2, 2026
Unforgiving Places
Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually gro…
January 22, 2026
Capitalism and Crises
The world is encountering multiple crises - climate, droughts, floods, energy, food, and pandemics, to name a few. Capitalism and Crises: How to Fix T…
January 14, 2026
Digital Innovation Strategy
Based on applied economics and from the perspective of an innovator seeking to develop a new digital business, Digital Innovation Strategy (Cambridge …
December 16, 2025
Hedged Out
In Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street (U California Press, 2022) Megan Tobias Neely, a former hedge fund worker takes an ethnographi…
December 10, 2025
Jewish Giving
The American Jewish philanthropic enterprise is unparalleled in scope, dynamism, and the diversity of funders and the causes they support. Yet even as…
December 5, 2025
Both/And Thinking
Life is full of paradoxes. How can we each express our individuality while also being a team player? How do we balance work and life? How can we impro…
November 4, 2025
The Future of Employment in Africa
The Future of Employment in Africa: Demography, Labor Markets and Welfare explores the major trends that will define the face of the sub-Saharan conti…
November 2, 2025
Leading the Sustainable Organization
Never before have we been presented with the prospect of redesigning business at scale to create a more sustainable future for our planet and the peop…
November 1, 2025
The Influence Economy
In The Influence Economy: Decoding Supplier-Induced Demand (Oxford UP, 2025), Maxim Sytch reveals how professional services--consulting, marketing, ba…
October 24, 2025
Epic Disruptions
Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025) arrives at the perfect moment as artificial intell…
October 23, 2025
Legal Knowledge in Organizations
Legal Knowledge in Organizations: A Source of Strategic and Competitive Advantage (Cambridge UP, 2025) offers a step-by-step guide on how to utilize t…
October 22, 2025
Beyond Shareholder Primacy
In Beyond Shareholder Primacy: Remaking Capitalism for a Sustainable Future (Stanford Business Books, 2024) Hart argues that the current Milton Friedm…
October 13, 2025
The Investment Philosophers
What do Warren Buffett and Friedrich Nietzsche have in common? Why does Baruch Spinoza’s understanding of irrational emotions help explain financial m…
September 23, 2025
Chokepoints
“The acme of skill,” Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, is not “to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles,” but “to subdue the enemy without f…