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.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Communications, Corporate Governance, Ethics, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.