ABSTRACT
Stewardship by corporate leaders requires concern for the decisions and actions of the enterprise but also for the organizational culture which gives rise to those actions. Attention by leaders to this responsibility to create an ethical culture has a brief and incomplete history in US companies. Corporate efforts to manage the ethical culture, which began in the 1980s, have been directed in recent years more toward legal compliance than ethical behavior. This is due to barriers such as the discipline of quarterly earnings and to the temptations of exploding CEO compensation based on those short-term earnings. Some leaders, however, are effectively creating ethical cultures which in turn support ethical behavior in the organization. These CEOs and boards of directors pursue a set of best practices which legitimize and motivate ethical behavior. Unfortunately, these leaders remain a minority among American executives.
