Interview with Roy J Lewicki on Building Ethical Organizations
August 2009 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Prof. Roy J Lewicki
Irving Abramowitz Professor of Business Ethics and Professor of Management and Human Resources Max M Fisher College of Business

• With millions of jobs being cut, the global financial system under serious stress, and many companies across the globe going bankrupt, many have likened this crisis to Great Depression II?What’s your reading of the current financial crisis?
  I do not have personal experience with the Great Depression, although my parents certainly did! They were teenagers during that time and frequently told me how difficult it was for their families. I do not sense that this current economic crisis is as severe as the Great Depression, although I think that it will take several years for employment numbers and market vitality to return. Our state of Ohio is in very serious economic jeopardy due to the combined effect of the recession and the huge decline in manufacturing, particularly the auto industry. This deficit promises to greatly affect our university budget for the next two to four years! In short, the economy will come back but it will be very slow in rebuilding. I think that one major actionwhich has not yet been taken is to help companies slow the layoffs rather than continue massive job cuts to make their numbers look better.

• You have been in the forefront making a strong case for honesty and fairness in organizations. What according to you are the critical elements of honesty and fairness in organizations? What are the yardsticks to measure the same?
  There are four critical elements. First, honesty and fairness have to be part of a company’s core values, as spelled out in a company mission statement. Second, those values have to be constantly stressed by senior executives, particularly the CEO, in speeches, presentations, and in justifying particular decisions and actions, posted around the company, and emphasized during employee training and development. Third, those senior executives must build credibility by ‘walking their talk’ and taking action consistent with those espoused values. Finally, there has to be evidence that the company actually makes ‘tough’ decisions consistent with those values, and that those people who do not embrace these values or violate them are dismissed from the company.

  Yardsticks to measure these elements include the visibility of this value statement, evidence of ‘tough’ decisions that were made which embraced these values, and feedback from employees at all levels that they are aware of the values and that they guide management decision making at all levels. Books by Bill George, True North and Tony Simons, The Integrity Dividend are good blueprints for these actions.

• In your years of teaching and researching on honesty and fairness, you would have come across quite a few companies known for their best practices. Can you please name few such ‘honest’ and ‘fair’ companies and what can we learn from those companies’ honest and fair practices over the years?
  I really do not track companies that pursue these practices—I tend to track executives but not necessarily their companies. It is also sometimes ‘dangerous’ to identify companies this way because when they change leadership, practices often change dramatically. At the national level, good examples would seem to include Starbucks and Johnson & Johnson, and more locally to me, Nationwide Insurance Company and Grange Insurance Company in Columbus, Ohio.

• Many question the relevance of business ethics as a course in MBA programs arguing vehemently that, ‘you cannot teach someone to be ethical, after all’. What has been your experience in delivering this course?
  My courses are elective courses, so only the students who want to discuss these issues enroll in the class. My experience is that students already know what the ‘right’ thing is to do in most situations, but don’t understand how their thoughts and reactions can get confused and compromised by ‘the forces of evil’. My experience is that I can certainly help students 1) understand the reasons why a strong personal value system is critical to personal and leadership success; 2) explore how individual decision making breaks down when individuals experience too much power, fear or greed, and 3) learn how to reason out the ‘right’ thing to do in the first place, and/or not get caught in the temptations of denial and cover-up. I know they understand these principles when they leave my course; I do not know whether this learning is permanent or how long it lasts. You will note that I am not trying to ‘change’ people’s ethical system; I am helping them understand the strong personal values that they bring to business situations, and how these personal values are often corrupted by excess power, greed, fear, and an organizational culture that allows them to compromise on what they know is the ‘right’ thing to do.