In 1995, Rushworth M. Kidder, founder of the Institute for Global Ethics, published How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living.

When Tough Choices was first published, many people had not given much thought to the importance of ethics. Ethical considerations were not deemed particularly urgent, and the idea of shared values was not widely accepted. Since then, however, given the likes of Enron and Bernie Madoff, most people readily see that these occurrences, and the recent economic implosion, are due as much to unethical thinking and actions as to anything else.