In Memoriam: Richard P. Nielsen
Professor of Management and Organization Richard P. Nielsen, a longtime Carroll School of Management faculty member who was a nationally recognized leader in the teaching, study, and advocacy of professional and business ethics, died on May 28. He was 79.
Richard Nielsen (Gary Wayne Gilbert)
Dr. Nielsen, who joined Boston College in 1981, saw ethics not simply as an individual code of conduct, but a means to promote positive holistic change and improve the lives of those around them.
In a 2024 interview for the 鈥淏usiness Ethics Pioneers鈥� YouTube channel, Dr. Nielsen explained that he had become interested in ethics as a young boy: He observed people who, although aware of unethical, and injurious, behavior that caused great harm in their community, did not take any action against it. When he asked these individuals why, he recalled, they expressed a fear of retaliation and that they felt helpless against those who were committing immoral acts.
Dr. Nielsen said that experience remained fresh in his mind during his college years and beyond: 鈥淓ver since then, I鈥檝e been trying to find out ways to try to help people who feel powerless to help themselves and the people they love and care about.鈥�
During 1978, Dr. Nielsen worked as a reporter/researcher for a New York Times project concerning criminal penalties for managers in situations where consumer and employee injuries and deaths are caused by organizational behavior.
In 1985, Dr. Nielsen published the paper 鈥淎lternative Managerial Responses to Unethical Strategic Management,鈥� one of the first to examine the relationship between ethics and management, and what managers can do about unethical organization behaviors. Dr. Nielsen related the experience of a plant manager who was concerned because his company planned to cut costs and ignore anti-pollution laws. When the manager urged the owner to reconsider, he was told that complying with the regulations would cost too much; either the plant would have to close鈥攑utting several thousand people out of work鈥攐r it would have to ignore the pollution regulations.
Ultimately, the manager was able to negotiate with other plant managers and engineers to find a solution that permitted affordable adherence to pollution laws and allowed the plant to remain open.
Ideally, said Dr. Nielsen in a 1985 interview with Boston College Biweekly, talking and problem solving together will enable an organization to find optimal solutions. But negotiations don鈥檛 feel 鈥渘atural鈥� to us, and when faced with the stress due to actual or potential conflict, he said, our impulse is to 鈥渁ttack or run away.
鈥淣egotiating takes courage, wisdom, clarity in communication skills and most of all practice. Most of us have no experience at negotiating, neither in our business nor personal lives.鈥�
鈥淎lternative Managerial Responses to Unethical Strategic Management鈥� won first prize in the annual 鈥淏est Paper in Corporate and Organization Planning鈥� competition.
In his 1996 book, The Politics of Ethics: Methods for Acting, Learning and Sometimes Fighting with Others in Addressing Ethics Problems in Organizational Life, Dr. Nielsen used fictional and historical characters to demonstrate attitudes and beliefs that work against organizational ethics: Adolph Eichmann was so immersed in the Nazi organization that he avoided ethical questions altogether, Faust personified the idea of using bad means to achieve good ends, while Socrates鈥� jailer portrayed a person who recognizes his actions on behalf of the organization are wrong but is afraid to stop them.
The book also included more contemporary and business-oriented case studies, like an automobile maker who calculates the cost of recalling a defective model against that of potential fatalities, or a manager who falsifies data to prevent a company from closing.
But handing out punishment in such cases is seldom enough to truly address ethics issues, Dr. Nielsen said: Organizations should create 鈥減olitical space鈥� to assess鈥攁nd if necessary, change鈥攖heir approach to ethics.
鈥淚f it is true that most organizations, and the people in them, have a cognitive understanding of ethics, then the question is how to stimulate and empower that characteristic. This is where the original meaning of politics comes in, the idea of a community of citizens interacting with one another.鈥�
This 鈥渁ction-learning鈥� could involve a small group of people discussing ethical matters informally over lunch, or a board of employees designated to examine and act on ethical issues in their organization. These models are not interchangeable, nor are they necessarily perfect solutions, but the objective is that 鈥渁s an organization acts upon the decisions it makes regarding ethics, it learns about its policies, traditions, biases, and other factors affecting ethics.鈥�
At 色花堂, he taught such courses as Organizational Ethics and Politics, Ethics Leadership Methods, Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility, Corruption and Ethics Reform Methods. In 1989, he was among the first cohort of faculty members to receive Boston College Jesuit Institute research grants, for his project 鈥淒ialectic Mysticism as Ethics Method: Is There a Lonerganian Catholic and Quaker Convergence?鈥�
Dr. Nielsen was active in the Carroll School鈥檚 Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics, and part of a faculty group that in 1997 launched an interdisciplinary seminar series at 色花堂, 鈥淓thics in Practice,鈥� to examine the professional and philosophical dimensions of ethics, and the unique resources the University brings to the exploration of each. 听
His work in ethics led him to national prominence, filling roles as president, program chair, and executive board member of the Society for Business Ethics, a non-profit organization established in 1980 to promote the advancement and understanding of ethics in business; the organization named him as one of the 鈥淎cademic Pioneers in Business Ethics.鈥� He also served on the editorial board for its journal, Business Ethics Quarterly, and on those of the Business and Professional Ethics Journal, Journal of Academic Ethics, and Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal.
A native of New York City, Dr. Nielsen earned bachelor鈥檚 and master鈥檚 degrees at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and a doctorate at Syracuse University.
He is survived by his wife, Angela; daughters Lara and Anna; and siblings Donna Stricker, Eric Nielsen, and Merrily Biechele; he was predeceased by his brother Seb.
Plans for a service will be announced at a later date.
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