Ethical Leadership in a Global World—a roadmap to the book

Abstract

This book is inspired by the observation of both practitioners and academics that, somehow, as the millennium has turned, we seem to have ventured onto a slippery slope where one organisational scandal erupts after another. Most people are aware of Enron in the United States and Northern Rock in the United Kingdom, and the accounting scandals that led to the introduction of Sarbanes Oxley in the United States and corporate governance codes in the United Kingdom and beyond. Since then, many firms have adopted strict ethical codes of conduct, some have even appointed chief ethics officers (Fombrun, 2004), and the number of courses and modules on ‘ethics’ in business schools and uni-versities has risen dramatically. These various measures, however, did not stop the recent spate of banking scandals, and the near meltdown of the global financial system. While there were rules in place designed to make the system function smoothly and safely, it seems that those who were in charge — the leaders of organisations — took a position that allowed them to find ways around these rules, by inventing products and transactions not covered by them, or by reinterpreting them so as to permit profit maximisation. They did this without regard for the possible consequences for the rest of society, and the term ‘greed’ has often surfaced in analyses of what happened.