2009 Headlines
Barbara Ley Toffler to Present 2009 Day Family Ethics Lecture
"The Cult in Culture" Scheduled for April 22, 2009
April 7, 2009 | Ithaca, NY | The Johnson School at Cornell University is pleased to announce that Barbara Ley Toffler will present this year's Day Family Ethics Lecture, "The Cult in Culture." The event will take place on Wednesday April 22, 2009 from 4:25 p.m. to 5:40 p.m. in B09 Sage Hall. Admission is free and open to all with a reception to follow immediately.
Toffler is the author of Final Accounting: Ambition, Greed, and the Fall of Arthur Andersen, described as "a fascinating insider exposé" that "may be the most important analysis coming out of the corporate disasters of 2001 and 2002." A former Harvard Business School professor with a Ph.D. from Yale, Toffler was brought in to Arthur Andersen as a partner to develop consulting services in Ethics and Responsible Business Practices. She left Andersen four years later, because of many of the concerns that are now common knowledge.
"The Cult in Culture" is the title in a chapter from Final Accounting in which she describes how Arthur Andersen's widely admired corporate culture morphed from focusing on professionalism and meeting clients' needs to maximizing profits for the firm. Her experience is a vivid example of how a skewed corporate culture can tempt even well-intentioned employees into ethically questionable behavior, a problem explored in the half-semester course, Ethics and Corporate Culture, taught by Professors Dana Radcliffe of the Johnson School and Brad Wendel of the Law School.
While on campus Toffler will also meet with business and law students for lunch, and will speak to MBA students in the Johnson School's Business Ethics class. From 3 p.m to 4 p.m. she will be available in Sage Hall 241 for informal conversations with faculty and students.
The Day Family Ethics Lecture launched in 2007 and has featured attorney John Hueston, who served as lead prosecutor in the Enron trial, and Alice Eldridge, vice president for ethics and business conduct at Lockheed Martin Corp. The lecture series is made possible by the Day Family Senior Lecturer of Business Ethics Discretionary Fund, established in September 2007. As a joint effort between the Johnson School and the Law School to support Cornell's commitment to leadership and business ethics, the fund was created by the generous donation of the Dr. Harry M. Day Charitable Foundation, and supported by Jerrold Day (Eng. '71, MBA '78) and Harry D. Day (JD '73).
