I've been talking with business leaders and educators this past month about genuinely ethical leadership. Like I was saying earlier, almost every university has at least one ethics course. Just seems like such a waste. I hope I'm wrong. I think all these leaders think that if they teach people "ethics" then people will be ethical. It will never work. My friend Gavin Grounds says that you can't teach ethics. What people really teach and measure is acceptable behavior.
As long as "acceptable behavior" in an area or industry or culture has a low bar of what is acceptable then you will never achieve what the educators pontificate about. The Wall Street Journal Asia edition yesterday had an article titled "Business schools need to do better teaching values".Here is an excerpt from the article: "hundreds of Harvard Business School's 2009 and 2010 graduates took "The MBA Oath". These students promised to "serve the greater good", act ethically, and refrain from pursuing greed at other's expenses." We'll that is just dandy! I sure hope that it makes a difference and I am glad that they are at least making an attempt. The problem is that platitudes and promises don't reach the core of who we are.
Last Friday the Atlanta Business Chronicle had an article online: "Emory Plans World Class Ethics Center". In the article they talk about how Emory University is raising up to $20 million to transform the two decade old institute into a global think tank on ethical issues. I wonder what the results of the institute have been over the last 20 years and how becoming a think tank will make a difference. I certainly hope that it does.
I guess my point here is that the issue of genuine ethical leadership is at a crisis and great institutions are searching for solutions. I maintain that we will continue to see decline until we recognize the root cause and seek to correct it. I'm going to keep working through this.
Darrell Tadley
Ethics starts in the home. I cannot see a drug dealer trying to teach their child to be honest. I don't see many things, in many places these days that show that people are honest or trust worthy. Too many people lie about themselves. With this being the case, how can a person be honest at work if they cannot be honest with their family or friends?
If we focused on family values and made a bigger effort in the public schools to hold the children to a higher standard, then things could be different. If we taught our children to treat others how you want to be treated, which is love, honor and respect one another. But, this isn’t the case. There are to many bad things like thugs, rapist, bigamist,liars and so on out there to make this world a honest place. The majority of everyone is about how to they get “mine” attitude, and not how can "I make" the world a better place. Here is a website that has a lot of Christian thoughts about everything.
http://www.focusonthefamily.com/
Posted by: Jareh | August 25, 2010 at 02:19 PM