Heart of A Business Ethic - (Hansen-Wessner Memorial Lecture) (Paperback)

About the Book

Over the past several years a cascade of corporate scandals have erupted. Savings and provisions for retirement have shrunk drastically. Jobs have been lost.

Book Synopsis

Over the past several years a cascade of corporate scandals have erupted. Savings and provisions for retirement have shrunk drastically. Jobs have been lost. One of the world's largest and best-known accounting firms is gone. Ordinary people have been hurt and they have lost confidence in business leaders. The on-going public debate over business ethics and corporate reform points to one common conclusion: Things cannot be corrected by simply adding more laws and new rules. The solution will come from high moral leadership.

The Heart of A Business Ethic is based on the Hansen-Wessner Lectureship Series established by the ServiceMaster Foundation to consider the source of moral authority and ethical behavior in business. The eight lectures in this series were presented at major universities in the U.S. and Britain, and brought together some of the most distinguished business experts of our time. What they have to say is important for business teachers and students, and business leaders at every level.
The scandals at Enron, Tyco and others have generated many books on business ethics, but none offer the expertise or breadth of thinking that this volume does. The Heart of A Business Ethic is useful to professors, students, and practitioners who not only want to understand what has happened, but who also want to think through the basis for a new standard of morality in business.

Review Quotes

The rancorous public debate over business ethics and corporate reform has lacked a few crucial ingredients: A genuine love for business and human enterprise, the confidence that the American corporation is 'worth saving, ' a sense that it is fully worthy of our loftiest ideals and most focused energies. Gratefully, this is precisely what Peter Drucker, Max De Pree, James Baker, Michael Novak and their distinguished colleagues offer us in The Heart of A Business Ethic.

About the Author

C. William Pollard is Chairman Emeritus of The ServiceMaster Company. He is a graduate of Wheaton College and received a J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the best-selling book, The Soul of the Firm and was the 2004 recipient of the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Business Ethics at Notre Dame.