No one ever said leading was easy, much less leading with ethics. But the latter is very important. It is the difference between a good executive, in the full sense of the expression, and one who only knows how to achieve technical perfection, and how to do things right, but does not know how to […]
Lazy, well connected and corrupt? The ethical profile of public managers
Last week I led a discussion among public managers on the ethics of their job, during a session of a public leadership program at IESE. I want to share with you the preliminaries of our conversation and the questions that finally came up. First of all, the owner of the public institutions is the people […]
Who is Picking up the Tab for the Financial Crisis? Is it Fair?
The most heavily indebted governments have always resorted to the same strategy: inflation. Suppose you owe 100 euros that you need to repay in one year at an interest rate of 3%. When the time comes, if inflation is 5%, you will repay 103 euros with a purchasing power of only 98 euros. The lender […]
Compliance as a Tool of Ethics
The first time I heard the term “corporate compliance,” I must confess it didn’t sit well with me. The term seemed to transform social responsibility – or worse yet, ethics – into mere compliance with policy, norms and rules as dictated by law and regulation or corporate self-regulation. (An example of the latter would be […]
