On May 21, 2010, at 7:58 AM, Lee Robbins wrote:
>Hi all,
>Forgive me for bothering you with this but it’s very short. I think the teensy letter to the editor below captures much of the purpose of our Management, Spirituality and Religion group.
>
>LETTER
>Wall Street Ethics
>Published: May 20, 2010
>
>To the Editor:
>
>Re “Clients Worried About Goldman’s Dueling Goals” (front page, May 19):
>It’s all about ethics, not legalities. When “but it’s legal” continually trumps “what’s ethical,” we have a seriously broken system.
>
>Robert Brandes
>Fredericksburg, Tex.
I find that when teaching ethics, students had a surprisingly difficult time distinguishing between ethical and legal behavior. They assumed that if an act was legal, it was necessarily ethical. I wound up writing a case* in order to make the distinction vividly clear. It was about IBM's support of Nazi Germany. It is a pretty striking example of corporate actions that are unethical but legal.
- Don
* The publisher has kindly made the case and teaching note available for free at
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/omj/free_articles.html
---
Don McCormick
Department of Management, College of Business and Economics
California State University Northridge, Juniper Hall 4214
18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge CA 91330
http://www.csun.edu/~dmccormick (818) 677-2418
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