Rushworth Kidder, Advocate for FosteringMore Ethical Organizations Worldwide

Age at death: 67

Major philanthropy role: In 1990, Rushworth Kidder founded the nonprofit Institute for Global Ethics. The move was spurred by a trip he made to the ruined Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, where thousands of lives were lost directly or ended prematurely from the effects of cancer. It was a turning point in his life, says his longtime friend Carl Hausman. According to Mr. Hausman, Mr. Kidder, who took the trip as a columnist for The Christian Science Monitor, saw the event not as an accident but as the ethical failure of managers who, under pressure, decided to take shortcuts. “He came to believe that the development of stronger ethics in organizations becomes more urgent as the consequences of failure are multiplied by the technology.”

How he made his mark: His journalism background helped Mr. Kidder communicate, without jargon, the power of ethical principles to a new generation of corporate and community leaders. He wrote 12 books, two of which are widely used in college classes: How Good People Make Tough Choices and Moral Choices. Mr. Kidder “could clearly teach about complicated ethical dilemmas, skills which many people in the ethics field don’t have,” says Paul McAuliffe, executive director of the U.S. Federal Reserve Employee Benefits System and board chairman of the Institute of Global Ethics. “And he often did it with a bit of humor.”

His accomplishments: According to Mr. McAuliffe, Mr. Kidder helped people worldwide understand that ethical decisions are often a balance between two rights, not between right and wrong. When Mr. McAuliffe was ethics officer for a major health company, he hired Mr. Kidder to train leaders to make good but difficult decisions. The organization had to decide whether it should expand into developing countries where the potential for human impact was great, even though profits might be larger elsewhere.

“Rush’s way of thinking helped people feel comfortable making decisions that their gut told them was right. With his help, they had a way to reason through it,” Mr. McAuliffe says. “He often told us that just because it’s legal doesn’t make it ethical, and he advised managers on how to have the moral courage to speak up when they saw ethical problems.”

Other nonprofit ties: Since 1990, Mr. Kidder had served as a trustee of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.