Chicago Tribune
Keeping In Step With The Boss

By Harry Wessel

There's nothing new about ethical scandals in the workplace, but with a raft of recent high-profile cases, ranging from Enron and WorldCom to Martha Stewart and New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, ethics has become a hot topic.

Penn State researcher Linda Trevino and colleagues reported in a 1999 nationwide ethics survey that too many companies relied too heavily on formal ethics programs. Although virtually every Fortune 1,000 company had written ethics codes, such codes had little effect without "ethical leadership, fair treatment of employees and open discussion of ethics in the organization."

Trevino's study of more than 10,000 employees found that employees take a hard look at the motive behind an ethics program. A program perceived as merely protecting top executives in case of a legal mishap "may be worse than having no program at all."

To return to Media Coverage click here .

REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu .

Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the eBusiness Research Center, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.

Click here for more news.