Results released last week find that MBA students are more likely to cheat than other graduate students.  Their justification, according to the researchers, was that they thought everyone else was doing it too.  They were just going along to get along.

Before concluding that the future of corporate governance is doomed, let’s look at the bright side.  The fact that these young recruits can be so easily persuaded to adopt situational ethics means they can be led.  It also means that with the proper incentives they can be persuaded to engage in proper behaviors.
 To help drive the right behaviors smart employers will utilize strong leadership skills.  They will avoid mixed messages, the kind that say: “of course we follow the law” but whose subtext is “we need to hit our numbers.”  Strong leadership will also create the necessary incentives and rewards to reinforce appropriate behaviors instead of undermine them.

Such straightforward leadership is necessary because the “go along to get along” attitude means the current crop of recruits is more inclined to do what’s easy instead of right.  From the legal risk management perspective it means that unpopular liabilities will be tolerated and even ignored until they are too hot (i.e. expensive) to handle.

For more information about the role of leadership in building and sustaining a culture of compliance see chapter 12 (The Role of Ethical Leadership) in The Business Guide to Legal Literacy: What Every Manager Should Know About the Law (Jossey-Bass, 2006).  Click here for more information, including links to excerpts and table of contents.