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 Between the winter
of 2001 and the
summer of 2002,
Enron and Adelphia
Communications filed
for bankruptcy, and
Tyco International
was accused of
evading sales tax
totaling $1 million.
Recently, the CEO of
WorldCom was
convicted in a
federal court of an
$11 billion dollar
accounting fraud.
Was this an
unfortunate saga in
corporate history or
were the leaders of
these companies
unusually corrupt?
The disconcerting
answer to that
question, say Bob Hoyk and Paul Hersey
in The Ethical
Executive, is
"No, these leaders
are probably little
different from us."
Like us, they live
in a world where
there are always
multiple causes for
our actions. Our
behavior is the
result of a complex
weave of situational
factors, history and
personality. Even if
we have good ethical
values to begin
with, given certain
situational
pressures, we can
all become
unethical.
In this book, Hoyk
and Hersey describe
45 traps
into which any one
of us can fall.
These traps, they
say, can erupt in
any organization
environment. Some of
these traps distort
our perception of
right and wrong—so
we actually believe
our unethical
behavior is right.
Many of them are
psychological in
nature, and if we're
not aware of them
they are like
illusions—webs of
deception. In their
analysis, these
traps significantly
contributed to the
large-scale
corporate disasters
we witnessed in
recent years.
Knowledge of the
forty-five traps
will help the
individual stay away
from corruption.
Voyagers who know
the location of
quicksand navigate
around it. When we
clearly identify
danger, we can
prepare for it and
avoid it. Knowledge
of these traps will
aid individuals at
all levels of
organizations--from
volunteers in
nonprofit
organizations to
CEOs of large
companies.
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