Senior executives are thought to provide the organization’s ethical ‘tone at the top’. We conducted an inductive interview-based study aimed at defining the perceived content domain of executive ethical leadership. We interviewed two types of key informants - corporate ethics officers and senior executives - about executive ethical leadership and then a contrasting category we labeled ‘ethically neutral’ leadership. Systematic analysis of the data identified multiple dimensions of ethical and ethically neutral leadership. The findings suggest that ethical leadership is more than traits such as integrity and more than values-based inspirational leadership. It includes an overlooked transactional component that involves using communication and the reward system to guide ethical behavior. Similarities and differences between ethics officers’ and senior executives’ perceptions also led to insights about the importance of vantage point and social salience in perceptions of executive ethical leadership. In order to be perceived as an ethical leader by those outside the executive suite, the executive must engage in socially salient behaviors that make the executive stand out as an ethical figure against an ethically neutral ground.

No abstract

This paper investigates how deans and directors at the top 50 global MBA programs (as rated by the Financial Times in their 2006 Global MBA rankings) respond to questions about the inclusion and coverage of the topics of ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability at their respective institutions. This work purposely investigates each of the three topics separately. Our findings reveal that: (1) a majority of the schools require that one or more of these topics be covered in their MBA curriculum and one-third of the schools require coverage of all three topics as part of the MBA curriculum, (2) there is a trend toward the inclusion of sustainability-related courses, (3) there is a higher percentage of student interest in these topics (as measured by the presence of a Net Impact club) in the top 10 schools, and (4) several schools are teaching these topics using experiential learning and immersion techniques. We note a fivefold increase in the number of stand-alone ethics courses since a 1988 investigation on ethics, and we include other findings about institutional support of centers or special programs; as well as a discussion of integration, teaching techniques, and notable practices in relation to all three topics. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007ethics education, CSR, sustainability,

corporate social responsibility, corporate communications, transnational comparative analysis, social reporting,

This paper builds on London and Hart's critique that Prahalad's best-selling book prompted a unilateral effort to find a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP). Prahalad's instrumental, firm-centered construction suggests, perhaps unintentionally, a buccaneering style of business enterprise devoted to capturing markets rather than enabling new socially entrepreneurial ventures for those otherwise trapped in conditions of extreme poverty. London and Hart reframe Prahalad's insight into direct global business enterprise toward ''creating a fortune with the base of the pyramid'' (p. xi) rather than at the BoP. This shift in language requires a recalibration of strategic focus, we argue, and will necessitate implementation of ''moral imagination'' to formulate new mental models that can frame the possibility of local entrepreneurs working collaboratively and discursively with development partners drawn from civil society, corporate, and government sectors. Successful partnerships will arise from interactive processes of emergent, co-creative learning within a shared problem domain or ''community of practice''. We call attention to three related pluralist framings of situated learning within such communities of practice: (1) decentered stakeholder networks; (2) global action networks; and (3) a focus on ''faces and places'' as a cognitive lens to humanize and locally situate diverse inhabitants within base of the pyramid partnership projects.