The popular business press is replete with feature stories describing ethical meltdowns
and how those corporate misdeeds have eroded the public trust of business
leaders and their organizations. As most of us learned at our parents’ knees, trust and
reputation are built over many years and take but an instant to be destroyed. So here
we stand at a crossroads. Is it going to be business as usual for business? Or are businesspeople
going to commit to regaining the trust of our peers, our families, and our
fellow citizens?
In response to this crisis of trust, universities across the country are scrambling
to design new courses that incorporate leadership, communication skills, the basics of
human resources management, and ethics. That’s why we wrote this book; we want
to make the study of ethics relevant to real-life work situations. We want to help
businesspeople regain the trust that’s been squandered in the last few years.