Thursday, February 26, 2004

Can We Save The Corporate Soul?

I'm looking forward to meeting David Batstone this week who's written this interesting book called Saving The Corporate Soul.

One thing I find rather scary when it comes to Enron was the sense of moral "slippage" that took place. Can people really so drunk and caught up in a heady environment that they start thinking, "Well, if he did that, I might as well. If he thinks that's legal, well, I guess I'll go along with it." Didn't anyone (save Sharen Watkins, I guess) stop and say, "Hey wait a minute, this is amoral and possibly illegal?" Do people just not KNOW anymore what is ethical and what is unethical?

It brings the conversation around to moral absolutes of right and wrong. Are there absolute wrongs? When you take your kid to church every week and talk about these things, you hope you can keep answering their questions as they get bigger and bigger. My kid's almost up to my shoulder. When he's taller than I am, will I still have all the answers he needs?