From Leadership 2.0: Ethics More Important Than Ever

By Mark Phillips

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Angered at Wall Street.

Apalled by the bonuses that AIG paid its employees.

Beside themselves over the mortgage debacle.

At left: Professor Russ Griffin leads the Leadership 2.0 class in a discussion on "The Keys to Understanding Your Personal Leadership" at Northwood University’s West Palm Beach campus.

The rage that many Americans feel toward corporations means ethics monitoring has never been so important to American business, says Jerry van Rossom.

"If we don’t act ethically as businesspeople, government will step in and tell us how to do it. American business already has seen this with the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley. It’s an attempt to make sure people work ethically.

"What you’re seeing in large corporations is the creation of ethics officer positions, who report directly to the CEO," said van Rossom, adjunct professor of business ethics at Marygrove College in Detroit. Van Rossom spoke to students of the Leadership 2.0 on the topic of “Is it just business or is it JUST business?"

To make his point about how ethics can be a gray area, Van Rossom led students through a discussion of the true story of a group of people who climbed the Himalayas. The group came across an unclothed, dying man and had to make a decision about whether to take the man back down the mountain to potentially save him and lose out on a very expensive trip. Or to continue on their trek, leaving the man to die. Depending on the situation, taking the man to "safety" could have jeopardized the lives of other team members.

"An ethical dilemma is trying to solve something where both answers are correct," van Rossom said.

In the case of the AIG bonuses, not paying them could have meant lawsuits and breaking contracts. "We’re bound to follow through because of the contracts, but it doesn’t feel right," he said.

Why were Americans angered by the bonuses, even though the money was a small slice of the overall financial system bailout? "Jealousy is part of it, so is the realization of how much money people are really making," van Rossom said. There’s a realization in the difference between what the classes of people are making."

Earlier in the day, Professor Russ Griffin turned the Leadership 2.0 into a sort of Donald Trump’s "The Apprentice."

Students made up a fictional paper chain company. Some manufactured paper chains, some acted as salespeople, while one student acted as CEO. One by one, Griffin sent in students playing the role of customer, while other students, acting as observers, took note of how customers were treated.

In the end analysis, customers and observers detailed how different members of the paper chain company treated not only each other but customers.