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© Nathan Mandell
Professor
David Messick shares his perspective on the importance
of ethics in leadership. |
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New leadership
forum accents ethics and integrity
by
Deborah Leigh Wood
If the
title of the Kellogg Leadership Forum’s inaugural alumni
conference seemed a little ambiguous, it was deliberately
so. “Leading People with Values: The Business Case,”
held Oct. 14 at the James L. Allen Center, addressed “the
values of those leading and those being led,” said David
Messick, the Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics
and Decision in Management at the Kellogg School, and one
of the conference organizers.
Focusing
on the critical need for leaders to maintain ethical integrity
in light of corporate scandals, the conference offered insights
from a number of leaders and leadership experts. In his opening
keynote address, Northwestern University President Henry S.
Bienen spoke about the challenges of leading a university.
In her closing keynote, Pamela Forbes Lieberman ’90,
CEO and president of TruServ Corp., chronicled how, in the
face of extreme shareholder skepticism, she turned a moribund
company into a successful one.
Messick
articulated the importance of avoiding culture clashes during
mergers and acquisitions by finding ways to meld employees
with different societal identities into one cohesive unit.
Raymond Baumhart ’45, president of Loyola University
from 1970 to 1993, discussed the importance of credibility
and integrity in companies that conduct repeat business. Firms
who transact one-shot deals, he says, have less motivation
to behave ethically.
And,
with a nod to this year’s political elections, Roderick
M. Kramer, professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford
Graduate School of Business, said that when people are confronted
by their mortality through fears of attack or in other ways,
they tend to gravitate toward leaders who display the most
charisma.
In addition
to the Kellogg Leadership Forum, “Leading People with
Values” was sponsored by the Kellogg Alumni Advisory
Board, the Kellogg Alumni Club of Chicago and the Ford
Center for Global Citizenship.
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