Kellogg World Alumni Magazine, Winter 2004Kellogg School of Management
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Business and law come together in innovative Kellogg School Exec Ed program
Entrepreneurial advocates share experiences
Major renovations made to Donald P. Jacobs Center
Better business models on display at annual Kellogg School Social Change Conference
Kellogg team wins Navteq Sustainability Case Challenge
New leadership forum accents ethics and integrity
Case study initiative enhances Kellogg School's academic reputation
Motorola and the Kellogg School continue valuable partnership
 
 
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  Prof. David Messick
 
© Nathan Mandell
Professor David Messick shares his perspective on the importance of ethics in leadership.
   
New leadership forum accents ethics and integrity

by Deborah Leigh Wood

If the title of the Kellogg Leadership Forum’s inaugural alumni conference seemed a little ambiguous, it was deliberately so. “Leading People with Values: The Business Case,” held Oct. 14 at the James L. Allen Center, addressed “the values of those leading and those being led,” said David Messick, the Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management at the Kellogg School, and one of the conference organizers.

Focusing on the critical need for leaders to maintain ethical integrity in light of corporate scandals, the conference offered insights from a number of leaders and leadership experts. In his opening keynote address, Northwestern University President Henry S. Bienen spoke about the challenges of leading a university. In her closing keynote, Pamela Forbes Lieberman ’90, CEO and president of TruServ Corp., chronicled how, in the face of extreme shareholder skepticism, she turned a moribund company into a successful one.

Messick articulated the importance of avoiding culture clashes during mergers and acquisitions by finding ways to meld employees with different societal identities into one cohesive unit. Raymond Baumhart ’45, president of Loyola University from 1970 to 1993, discussed the importance of credibility and integrity in companies that conduct repeat business. Firms who transact one-shot deals, he says, have less motivation to behave ethically.

And, with a nod to this year’s political elections, Roderick M. Kramer, professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, said that when people are confronted by their mortality through fears of attack or in other ways, they tend to gravitate toward leaders who display the most charisma.

In addition to the Kellogg Leadership Forum, “Leading People with Values” was sponsored by the Kellogg Alumni Advisory Board, the Kellogg Alumni Club of Chicago and the Ford Center for Global Citizenship.

©2002 Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University