W. Michael Hoffman is the founding Executive Director of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Since 1976, the Center has served as a research and consulting institute and an educational forum for the exchange of ideas and information in business ethics.
Dr. Hoffman received his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1972 at the University of Massachusetts in conjunction with Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges. He is the Hieken Professor of Business and Professional Ethics at Bentley University and was Chair of the Department of Philosophy for 17 years. He has authored or edited 16 books, including Business Ethics: Readings and Cases in Corporate Morality (now in its 4th edition), Ethics Matters: How to Implement Values-Driven Management (2000) and The Ethical Edge: Tales of Organizations that Have Faced Moral Crises (1995). He also has published over 95 articles.
Dr. Hoffman has consulted on business ethics for numerous corporations, universities and government agencies. Clients have included Baker Hughes, Blue Shield of California, Cablevision, CBS, Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC), El Paso Corporation, Exelon Corporation, Fidelity Investments, GTE, General Electric, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, NYNEX (now Verizon), PeopleSoft, Textron, TRW Systems , and Tyson Foods.
He has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow and Consultant, a lecturer at universities and conferences around the world, and an expert witness on business ethics in numerous legal cases. He is on the board of editors of many business ethics journals, was a co-founder and President of the Society for Business Ethics, and served on the advisory board of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. He was the founding Executive Director of the Ethics Officer Association (now the Ethics & Compliance Officer Association) from 1992 to 1995, a member of its Board of Directors until 1997, and then Advisor to the Board until 2005. He was named the 2007 Humanist of the Year by The Ethical Society of Boston, and in 2009 he received the Society for Corporate Compliance and Ethics Award for continuing contributions in the field of ethics and compliance.
He has been quoted extensively on business ethics in newspapers and magazines, including the Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Financial Times, Industry Standard, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Newsweek, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post and is interviewed frequently for television and radio programs around the country.
Dr. Hoffman resides in West Newton, Massachusetts with his wife, Bliss Read Hoffman.
Business Ethics Perspectives on International Negotiations