The Big Picture

Ethics as a Recruitment Tool

Whether a company acts ethically is a significant factor in the average American's willingness to work for an employer, according to research released in August by LRN. The study found that one in three employed Americans have actually left a job because they disagreed with a company's business ethics.

Other findings included:

• 94 percent of workers say it's "critical" or "important" that the company they work for is ethical
• 82 percent said they would prefer to be paid less and work for a company with ethical business practices than receive higher pay at a company with questionable ethics
• 80 percent cite disagreement with the ethics of fellow employees, a supervisor or management as the most important ethical reason for leaving a job
• 56 percent of U.S. workers define their current company as having an ethical culture.  Yet one in four say that in the past six months they witnessed unethical, and even illegal, behavior where they work.  Among those, only 11 percent say they were not affected by it. 

For the full story from LRN, click here.

Work hard and prosper...without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake

Steve Jobs' commencement address got a lot of attention recently, but I haven't heard as much about Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's address to the graduating class of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

Greenspan emphasized the importance of being honest and fair in business dealings - something too often overlooked in this Sarbanes-Oxley era.

I presume that I could offer all kinds of advice to today's graduates from my nearly six decades in private business and government. I could urge you all to work hard, save, and prosper. And I do. But transcending all else is being principled in how you go about doing those things. It is decidedly not true that "nice guys finish last," as that highly original American baseball philosopher Leo Durocher was once alleged to have said.

I do not deny that many appear to have succeeded in a material way by cutting corners and manipulating associates, both in their professional and in their personal lives. But material success is possible in this world, and far more satisfying, when it comes without exploiting others. The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.

Good career advice.