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Past Initiatives

Ethics (2005)

Troubled by reports of corporate corruption and unethical conduct on college campuses, in 2004, the Forum launched its Ethics Initiative. Co-chaired by William J. Pesce, President and CEO of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and John J. DeGioia, President of Georgetown University, the initiative explored what would be necessary to embed ethics in our nation's businesses and institutions of higher education.

The Ethics Initiative's findings culminated in a final report, Embedding Ethics in Business and Higher Education: From Leadership to Management Imperative (pdf). Released in 2005, the report introduces a new framework for measuring and embedding ethical performance. The report diagnoses the problem of corporate corruption, explains available management options to address organizational ethics, provides new strategies for weaving ethics into the culture of an organization, and offers a practical application of that strategy for businesses and higher educational institutions.

Among other findings, the report concludes that ethics can be embedded into an organization's culture both through leadership and through proactively managing ethical performance. The latter is accomplished by motivating individual managers and leveraging their ingenuity by incorporating explicit objectives, proper incentives, periodic evaluations, and by providing the necessary support and resources within an organization. In other words, the report concludes, ethics must be managed with the same diligence and urgency that would be applied to any other vital aim of an organization.