More Firms Trying to Instill Ethical Values
David Kearns, chairman and chief executive of Xerox Corp., got his first lesson in ethics at his mother's knee.</br></br>One way to stay out of trouble, she advised, was to always tell the truth. That way you don't have trouble getting your story straight.</br></br>It was the simple, old-fashioned way to learn about right and wrong. But in the wake of Watergate, Ivan Boesky, scandals in the defense industry and big-time deal-making, many companies are finding that teaching employees that lesson is a tough and complex job.</br></br>"Companies increasingly are concerned about ethics ... because the cost of behaving unethically can be great," said Gary Edwards, executive director of the Ethics Resource Center. "They hope their efforts will prevent misconduct but also bind people to the company and that has implications for productivity and quality."</br></br>Michael Hoffman, director of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College, said it's not that business people are less ethical today, but that the pressures of competition sometimes lead employees to compromise their personal integrity to satisfy what they mistakenly believe are company goals.