Strong Moral Compass Is An Essential Tool Of Management (and Life)!

"You don't learn to be ethical in business school and you don't unlearn how to be unethical," he says. "You live by a code of ethics that reflects your core values. You don't learn it in the classroom."

The chief executive of Cloud 9 Shuttle in San Diego is bristling these days at the antics of the executives of Enron, WorldCom, Merck and other companies whose corporate integrity is being challenged.

He says they are damaging the reputations of all executives who obey laws, care for their employees and play fair.

Having a corporate leader with a strong moral compass is essential. It establishes a tone that resounds throughout an organization and is at the base of a successful business. When that's missing, the foundation of a company is shaky.

"These executives played fast and loose because they could," Hawkins says. "It's time for decent CEOs to stand up and say, 'This is wrong. You guys are wrong. And we're not going to stand for it.' "

In some ways, Hawkins is speaking for an entire society. In the last few months, accounting skullduggery has been uncovered at some very large and previously well-regarded corporations. These lapses have jeopardized not just the money of investors, but the jobs of the companies' employees and the public's confidence in our economic system.

A study last December by Walker Information of Indianapolis showed that just 49 percent of American workers believed the most senior officers of their companies were people of high integrity. The study also revealed that 65 percent of workers who witnessed ethical violations inside their companies refused to report them, citing as a primary reason that they didn't think it would do any good.

Marc Drizin, Walker's employee loyalty specialist, insists that the corporate accounting scandals surfacing each week are not caused by ethics lapses, but genuine misconduct.

"Ethics means that you have a choice," he says. "But when you look at the stuff going on in Enron or WorldCom, it's just wrong. These aren't ethical issues. The things these people did are just wrong. There is no law in the world that would have stopped the people at Enron from doing what they did."

Drizin says he believes wayward executives are clearly missing the point. They are putting short-term gains, stock prices and greed ahead of their companies' and communities' best interests.

Walker's survey finds that just 24 percent of workers are remaining with their companies out of true loyalty, while others feel trapped in their jobs and still others refuse to leave their companies even though they are deeply disgruntled.

"You have to look at how many employees stay because they want to and how many stay because they have to," Drizin says. "When you have a company that does the right things for the right reasons, employees want to stay."

That translates directly to the bottom line by increasing employee retention and productivity.

"When the employees are happy in their jobs and believe in the company, customers notice," Drizin says. "And, when customers notice, they buy more."

That should capture the attention of any executive.

Cloud 9's Hawkins takes the recent corporate scandals very personally. He says he has a responsibility to the 350 workers at his company, and he would never betray it.

"You do the right things and you will be OK," he says. "Your employees will make your company better.

"But when you see the behavior that we've seen by CEOs lately, it's just wrong. These are crooks, bad guys, liars and cheats. We shouldn't put up with this behavior anymore. We have to stand up together and show our outrage."