Credibility Crises

Richard Nielsen studies corruption.

BusinessEthics

DefenseIndustryInitiativesOnBusinessEthics (1986): 46 vendors confessed voluntarily to fraud/waste. 39 of that group were shortly afterward investigated for abuses they failed to report
- Paranoid perspective - maybe they were being punished for Co Operation!
1991 poll of Canadian office workers by LouisHarris found largest single source of job dissatisfaction was bad ethics.
Business School involvement
- Amitai Etzioni article - Debates continued over whether ethics should be a required course or a separate elective or, alternatively, whether the topic should be integrated into all classes. A member of the Marketing department mused that if the latter policy were adopted, his department would have to close because much of what it was teaching constituted a form of dissembling: selling small items in large boxes, putting hot colors on packages because they encourage people to buy impulsively, and so forth. A finance professor was also concerned about its effects on his teaching. Students later told me that they learned in his course how you could make a profit by breaking implicit contracts.
- weeding out bad apples: [1](http://www.pwcglobal.com/Extweb/New Co At Work.nsf/docid/020FA888B1BFF7B785256C760063D9DE) and [2](http://www.pwcglobal.com/Extweb/New Co At Work.nsf/docid/085FDB785E3882CA85256C760063D9B6)
- http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2003/nf20030117_2368.htm
- http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2003/nf20030117_3119.htm

Bill Seitz