2009 Headlines
Cornell's Johnson School and Law School Create Ethics & Corporate Culture Course
Course explores how corporate culture can lead good people to do bad things
March 4, 2009 | Ithaca, NY | The Johnson School and the Law School will be offering a new course for MBA and law students to help explore how corporate culture can induce even the best intentioned employee to do wrong. The half semester course, Ethics and Corporate Culture, is taught by Professors Dana Radcliff of the Johnson School and Brad Wendel of the Law School.
In the high-pressure worlds of business and law, all too often good people do bad things. In many cases, the unethical behavior is due in part to a "toxic" corporate culture. The attitudes, values, and practices that prevail in their organizations induce otherwise ethical employees to take actions that violate widely shared norms of conduct. Such behavior can be costly—even disastrous—leading to ruined careers, tarnished corporate reputations, and legal liability for the individuals and their companies.
In an environment where only results matter, it can be difficult for a new MBA or law school graduate to recognize and avoid unethical behavior. This course seeks, first, to help MBA and law students understand how a firm's culture can tempt—or push—employees into unethical behavior. The course also aims acquaint students with strategies for dealing with ethical challenges posed by a problematic corporate culture.
Since managers and attorneys frequently work together, team projects will require collaboration among MBAs and law students, as they bring both business and legal perspectives to bear on tough ethical issues. Class sessions include discussion of case studies and articles reporting on relevant research in organizational behavior, as well as talks by noted guest speakers from the fields of business and law.
Sessions with guest speakers are free and open to the public and will take place in Sage Hall, room B09 from 4:25 p.m. to 5:40 p.m. On March 11, the first speaker will be Frank Raiter, a managing director and head of residential mortgage backed securities ratings at Standard and Poor's from 1995 to 2005. Raiter was responsible for directing ratings criteria development, ratings production, marketing and business development for single family mortgage and home equity loan bond ratings and related products. He testified before Congress in October 2008 about the role the rating agencies performed in the residential mortgage market and also appeared on the PBS Now show "Credit and Credibility."
Milton Regan will speak on April 8. Regan is a professor of law and the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University. He is author of the 2004 book Eat What You Kill: The Fall of a Wall Street Lawyer.
Barbara Toffler will present this year's Day Family Ethics Lecture on April 22. 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.
