The failure of BA’s chief executive Alex Cruz to avoid toxic tone from the top will resonate for months, perhaps years. True the airline’s share price has not died a death. Toxic tone from the top can take months, even years to undermine a brand. No amount of high tech […]
Tag: Enron
Fraudsters rebranded —are they just manipulating us again?
Remember Jeffrey Skilling? He was the man who made Enron famous for all the wrong reasons. In 2006 this former chief executive arrived at a courthouse in Texas, for sentencing. He left with 14 years to serve, which a few years later was reduced to 10 years. Skilling is now expected […]
Is ethics in business situation specific, and if so what are the implications?
“Everybody’s ethics are different”, claimed Richard Desmond, owner of the Daily Express. He was being put on the spot to say what ethics meant to him. His much derided response landed badly. Particularly at the national enquiry examining the ethics, or lack of them in the media and especially at […]
Three turbo boosters to keep your company values alive
Most companies claim to have important values. In the best ones these drive the organisation, guiding both direction and culture. Yet as Enron demonstrated, boasting about values is easy. Making them come alive, and sustaining them is far harder. One leading global communication company for example, call its values “Guiding […]
Can we measure trustworthy business behavior?
Guest post from Barbara Brooks Kimmel, CEO & Cofounder Trust across America-Trust around the World Where does trust come from, what does it really mean, and why is it so important in business? As a former CEO once told me, most leaders are too busy dousing day-to-day fires to give […]
Should ethics really be taught in schools?
“We’re here to make money” That remains the over-arching driving force behind most businesses, and in some ways it’s right. A commercial business making no profit is either going broke, or is some kind of welfare case. But while making a profit is important, this can never be the sole […]
How to cure wilful blindness
There’s a disease eating away at many organisations. It has many names, but the best of them is “wilful blindness.” Another is conscious avoidance or ostrich tendency. Whatever you choose to call this insidious behaviour it’s about not asking too many questions, refusing to know and acknowledge what’s going on […]
Can ethics and sales ever be reconciled?
By Catherine Bernales and Antonia Di Lorenzo There’s a great cartoon in which a sales manager tells one of his team: “A dynamic sales idea Lou. I’m just sorry I have to notify the police.” At the recent Ethics and Governance conference by Ethisphere, in London, an attendee challenged the […]