There is an article from a couple of days ago in the NY Times entitled The Spreading Scourge of Corporate Corruption. It mentions studies done which indicate that the public basically expects corruption from corporations -- in fact it says that 62% of Americans believe corporate corruption is widespread and a whopping 75% believe it has increased over the last three years.
Wow, what a sad testament that is to our society today. Granted some of the thoughts here would be reflective of the banking debacles back a few years ago, but it can't explain the entire lack of faith.
Corruption, bribery and the like have been around ad infinitum. But I think today the impact of corruption (or mismanagement) has a much longer tail and affects so much more, just because of the global web of industry. When corruption is uncovered, the dominoes start to fall and the impact is not only global but comparatively instantaneous.
What is causing this? I think partly it is the constant analyst requirements which measure a company on short term performance. Inherently that means many CEOs want to become darlings of the investment community so they can move on to bigger and better gigs and well, if the rules have to be bent a little, well so be it. And of course once down that slippery slope into the greys..well it is not that long until the next minor step is into full scale corrupt activity.
Or is it also possible that we embrace qualities of CEOs that are not good for the company or the people because the qualities that they have mean they may be psychopaths? A recent study (click here for at the article) about this is sobering. The expectation is that 10% of all people in the financial services sector meet the criteria for psychopathy. So if you work in this sector, look around, you probably know someone who is psychopathic.
Maybe we have to rethink the qualities that we want in our people and our leaders. If a CEO moves around a lot from place to place, don't hire them on their short term results -- see how broken they left the company upon their departure. I once had a corporate CEO who destroyed a company I worked for (it doesn't exist anymore) after driving the stock up and then after leadership by humiliation and fear the stock tanked and held junk bond status -- just like the company from where he came - although he was smart or lucky enough to get out of that fiasco in time. You probably wonder how he could survive if he was such a bad leader? Because he managed upward very, very well.
So let's not accept the unethical -- in the long term in hurts everyone.
