14 - Global Engagement by Leaders Is a Moral Imperative: Building the Next Generation of Ethical Corporate Cultures

Summary

In an era of corporate mistrust, creating sustainable ethical corporations goes beyond implementing governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) strategy. It requires an ongoing intensified spotlight to make the highest ethical standards the norm, and ruthless intolerance of anything less. Corporations are at a tipping point seeking to build sustainable businesses while striving to avoid a front-page scandal. They are placing greater scrutiny on values as business enabler, leadership accountability, and building ethical decision-making as an integrated business process. The next generation of ethical systems is at our corporate doorstep. As Albert Einstein famously said, “we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Today’s workplace has an unprecedented four generations working alongside each other. Globalization and the flattened twenty-first-century economy have pivotally shifted the norms of communication, information sharing, and collaboration. Greater visibility through mass media and social media has revealed new consumer and corporate behaviors. With greater transparency at our fingertips, trust has become the new currency, evidenced in the backlash as trust in public officials and corporate leaders steadily declines. The Edelman Trust Barometer has been studying trust across four institutions since 2012: businesses, government, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and media. Their 2017 report reveals that trust has declined broadly across all four institutions and that trust is in crisis around the world.