Saturday, April 5, 2008

Book Down: Profit With Honor


Finished up Profit With Honor. A fairly quick read advocating Stewardship Ethics as the path the future economy must take to regain trust lost in the recent scandals of the past several years. Of interest was a quote stating that then Eliot Spitzer was prosecuting relentlessly those companies and individuals with a lapsed sense of ethics - times they are a changin'. He also foresaw the bursting of the housing bubble created by the baking and financial industry and lamented the potential buyout that would be required similar to the S&L of the 80's. RE. the last week's sale of Bear Stearns.
One of Yankelovich's examples of stewardship ethics is the Hybrid vs. the Hummer.

vs.

Toyota's Prius being an example of the company's stewardship ethics in their willingness to realize long term profits with short term losses because the hybrid was the right thing to do - environmentally and economically. Contrast that GM's Hummer - a gas guzzling SUV that has shown short term profits, but is not necessarily the right thing to do environmentally or in light of current gas prices, may not show the long term profits that the Prius will because of the Hummer's MPG inefficiency.

A worthwhile read in the field of business ethics - I'd say about 3 professional development hours of literature review / ethics (although it took me longer to read because I'm a slow reader...)

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