Key Principles
There are a number of principles and their attendant implications that underlie our approach.
1. We believe that leadership is important to successful businesses, but we also feel strongly that in well-run companies leadership is and must be dispersed. Leadership is not just a matter of position, title, or size of one’s office.
2. Instead, leadership can and should be encouraged and shared throughout an organization because business is too complex, too global, too interdependent, and too fast paced for a handful of people to call the shots for the entire firm.
3. Complex and difficult ethical opportunities and dilemmas occur at most any level of a corporation at most any time. Dispersed leadership means, however, that many individuals have the responsibility for doing the right thing in the right way no matter where they exist in the organization’s hierarchy.
4. Astoundingly, some flagrant breaches of ethical trust and fiduciary responsibility come directly from patently unethical top executives. Examples are Bernard Madoff in the U.S., B. Ramalinga Raju of Satyam in India, Calisto Tanzi of Parmalat in Italy, and numerous CEO’s of food and toy product companies in China. Many other ethical transgressions have been perpetrated by mid- or lower-level executives who operated outside of corporate practice and procedure causing significant damage to stakeholders as well as their companies. These ethical disasters might have been prevented if right-thinking people had taken the mantle of leadership to make sure that ethical business practices were developed, implemented, followed up, and fully engrained in the culture of the company or a specific unit.
With this in mind, we have videotaped conversations with business leaders at a variety of levels who have shared with us some of what they and their companies do to ensure the centrality of ethical business behavior. Of course what works for one company or division may not be appropriate for another. That is why our focus is on good and useful ethical business practices, not “best” practices. One size does not fit all, but the ideas you will hear and read about on this site should stimulate you to think creatively about your own company. Allow yourself to be stimulated and motivated by the ideas of these executives in order to think about your own companies, your own situation, and what you can do to integrate ethical business behavior into the way that your firm conducts business.
Navigating the BGS Center for Ethical Business Leadership
Think of this site as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear and read what executives of small and large, regional and global companies have to say about how their companies have tried to integrate ethical business practices into the very fabric of their organizations.
This web site provides four sources for inspiration and learning:
- Videotaped conversations with business leaders.
- Transcripts of discussions with other executives
- Eventually, more traditional articles written for the practicing manager that summarize some of the lessons to be learned and the underlying concepts that can guide executives in developing strategies and action steps for their own companies. (Under construction)
- The EBL Corporate Resource Library that enables the visitor to see and read actual documents that companies have developed to help them ensure that ethical business practice is planned for, instilled, assessed, and embraced throughout their organizations.
These four sources, which will be updated and added to periodically, form the basis of the site’s content.
To facilitate the use of these insights, we have organized the videos, transcripts, articles, and corporate documents by specific business subject matter such as the role of top leadership, instilling an ethical business culture, and managing ethical behavior with vendors. The complete organizing scheme and how to access these subject matter categories are presented below.
The Beta Gamma Sigma Center for Ethical Business Leadership is designed to be challenging, useful, and motivating. Hopefully you, the visitor, can draw inspiration from these good practices to implement or improve an action program in your organization.
Finally, we especially want to acknowledge and thank those many executives who have given of their time and their passion to encourage the rest of us to make ethical business behavior a fundamental part of the way business is done.
