The Center was established in 1997 to study and support private sector responsibility and public accountability; promote thinking and scholarship on business and normative ethics; provide research assistance to the Center’s many stakeholders.
Call for Proposals
Building Capacity to Combat COVID-19 in Africa:
Ideas and Innovations from Young Entrepreneurs
Research Pillars
Normative Business Ethics
This pillar actively supports Wharton faculty and graduate students, as well as other scholarly partners on research projects that explore ethical issues in business from critical and evaluative perspectives.
Business Ethics & Neuroscience
This program area is composed of three distinct and interrelated streams of business ethics inquiry: i) research on individual differences in the cognitive processes underlying ethical decision-making.
Corporate Governance & Accountability
This third program area of the Zicklin Center explores a host of issues relating to the enforcement of regulations from corporate accountability for political spending to standards of corporate liability and culpability.
Cryptoregulation
This program area focuses on the regulation, self-regulation, and co-regulation of token offerings from a multi-jurisdictional perspective.
Business Development & Innovation
This pillar supports Wharton faculty, graduate students and other scholarly partners undertaking research projects that focus on the new role business can play in development innovation.
Moral Psychology & Business Ethics
This pillar focuses on empirical questions in business ethics, such as: How do individuals and firms make moral decisions that impact the business world? What strategies and reforms can be adopted to increase ethical behavior in organizations? In addition to providing research support to psychologists studying business ethics, the Center also hosts workshops and other speaker events.
Financial Regulation
This program area actively supports Wharton faculty and graduate students, as well as other scholarly partners on research projects that explore underlying issues at the intersection of finance, law, politics, and history.
Business and Human Rights
This pillar will support emerging interdisciplinary research on Business and Human Rights and provide a platform to discuss corporate human rights challenges in different industry sectors.
Student Research
Announcing the 2020 Ideas For Action Competition
The World Bank Group and the Zicklin Center at Wharton are pleased to announce the 2020 Ideas for Action (I4A) competition, which engages young people (18-35 years old) to develop innovative solutions in support of the implementation of the SDGs (https://ideas4action.org). Note that the Competition Guidelines for 2020 will mirror those for 2019 [https://ideas4action.org/2019-competition/]. The deadline for submission is February 29, 2020. Due to the increased interest, in 2019 we received 3,100 applications from 142 countries and territories, and more than 7,000 registered teams, we are moving to a new platform for registration and applications submission, which will be available in the second half of November.
March 27, 2020
Online Technologies and Respect for Human Rights
in Conflict and High-Risk Areas
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
October 18, 2019
Conference on Corporate Political Spending:
Why There Is a Need to Revisit the Model Code of Conduct to Manage Today’s Heightened Risks

September 5-7, 2019
Wharton Reg@Tech
The Evolution of Digital Assets

April 18-19, 2019
FinReg@Wharton

March 27-30, 2019
Wharton Reg@Tech
Digital Assets and Decentralized Finance

February 28 – March 1, 2019
4th Roundtable on Corporate Political Accountability:
Corporate Political Spending and Risk in the Age of Trump

February 14 – 16, 2019
Progressive Corporate Criminal Liability

November 16, 2018
The Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics and the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research
present a symposium on