The McGowan Blog on Business Leadership and Ethics – Brand New Business Ethics Blog!

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I want to extend a warm welcome to Larry Kahaner and his new blog. I have been reading it and I recommend you do so as well. I added it to my favorites and my blog roll. I believe that would make it the 12th blog I have recommended in that manner.

This is the intro for the first post on The McGowan Blog on Business Leadership and Ethics.

Larry Kahaner

This is the first of a twice-weekly blog on business leadership and ethics hosted by the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund. We will discuss current issues, ask questions, offer opinions and solicit your comments with the goal of spurring conversations among the business, government and academic communities.  The subject of whistleblowers has been a controversial topic lately, so let’s begin.

There are now three posts as follows:

Feb. 27 –

Is Whistleblowing  the Only Way to Spur Ethical Behavior?
  
( First Line) As a society, we Americans love whistleblowers. They are our folk heroes, our Davids versus Goliaths.

March 2 –  

Are B-Schools Teaching the Right Lessons About Ethics?After the Enron scandal and again after the Worldcom debacle, B-schools juiced up their ethics courses partly out of guilt, partly to deflect public and government criticism and partly because these scandals offered a perfect time for professors to sell ethics curricula to school leadership. We’re seeing the same thing now. Don’t get me wrong; I applaud any effort to increase ethics training – and I’m not so cynical to say that it won’t work this time – but have  previous attempts worked as well as we had hoped?

March 8 –
 
In light of these massive changes, what is the role that multinational U.S. business should play in American society considering that their main interests are moving offshore? Indeed, the U.S consumer and the U.S. government have all helped produce world-class, profitable and innovative American companies. What, if anything, do these companies owe the U.S. government and its people for making them the global giants that they are today?
 
 Here is a brief biographical sketch from the blog –
Larry Kahaner has been a business journalist for more than 20 years, a former Business Week Washington correspondent, and the author of many books about business ethics including: Values Prosperity and the Talmud: Business Lessons from the Ancient Rabbis; Competitive Intelligence: How to Gather, Analyze, and Use Information to Move Your Business to the Top; and Say It and Live It; The 50 Corporate Mission Statements that  Hit  the Mark, (co-author). You can reach him at: McGowanFundBlog@gmail.com.