Anything that one reads on setting the “tone at the top, had to be disappointed in the stories of the CEO of Walmart knowing about the bribery issues with Mexico, and JP Morgan being ordered to improve their compliance training. Now I find that I’m part of a class action law suit of homeowners, against Chase for lowering my home equity amount available based on my home, being devalued due to the recession. It has been deemed unlawful .
What a tone at the top! What does this say to employees, customers, vendors, suppliers and competitors? It just seems that no matter how much ethics is stressed, it doesn’t seem to be valued to those leaders.
What are the consequences to work for companies in which the senior level leaders ”march to a seemingly different drummer?”
Why must the government spend obscene amounts of money to investigate, and prosecute such examples? Shouldn’t ethics and ethical leadership be inherent in top leadership?
These types of situations never seem to end and get very tiring. The “bottomline” seems to the motivating factor to “play the odds” of the chance being found out.
Is this kind of stuff legal? I’m not a lawyer so I can’t tell you. Is this type of behavior, if proven true, ethical? Absolutely not. A crucial issue, for me, is the same old song of, if it can be proven that one is not guilty, then one acted appropriately.
Really?
fbucaro
Like you, business ethics and ethical leadership expert, Frank Bucaro has seen the challenges and problems of corporate leadership, particularly over the past few years in regards to poor decision-making, SEC violations, and record breaking financial settlements in a number of different industries.
With over two decades of executive training, speaking, writing and with real life experiences, his view and approach to ethics in the workplace is uniquely different. He emphasizes that ethics is a moment-to-moment choice and has little to do with position, titles, personalities or education. Ethics is everybody’s responsibility from the top down.
His goal is to help organizations to:
a. Strengthen their ethics training initiatives in order to significantly decrease the odds of an ethical/compliance violation.
b. Energize, train and motivate employees to understand the value of consistent “high road” behavior as a business advantage.
c. Support individuals and thereby the organization by contributing to its success by quality, ongoing values based leadership development.
Frank is known for his very practical, slightly irreverent, yet somewhat humorous approach to ethics and leadership development. His conversational style and real life stories connect with his audience in a personal, intense and practical level.
Companies such as Bayer Healthcare, BP, ReMax International, EnMax Energy, Danone, etc. have partnered with Frank when they want to proactively stress the message, tools, insights and practical applications that good ethics IS good for business!