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Sunday November 16, 2008 | 12:00 AM

IS THE PHRASE “business ethics” an oxymoron? It would be easy to draw that conclusion given the spate of corporate scandals in recent years. Many observers thought the Enron scam was as bad as things could get until recently, when some of the nation’s most revered financial institutions were trapped by the web of deceit and secrecy they had spun to create and sell exotic securities for huge profits.

It’s not just foggy nostalgia to believe there was a time when business – and society as a whole – were more ethical and less concerned with short-term gain, according to Rev. William Byron, S.J., the former president of the University of Scranton.

While doing research about 20 years ago, in the midst of a brutal round of downsizing, Byron interviewed dozens of recently laid-off managers.

“I really saw up close how there was a new corporate culture” that emphasized profits above all, he said. Investors played along; it seemed that the more ruthless the job cuts the more a company’s stock price would jump.

It’s not just the business world that has backslid, Byron said last week. People used to wrestle internally over whether their job or family came first. But that has changed to “exaggerated self interest – me first,” he contends, with the shift contributing to a breakdown in values at home and on the job.

“Lay on to that the notion of greed,” he adds, and you have the ingredients for fraud and self-dealing that have been in the headlines so much recently.

It’s easy to see why; landing a top job and schmoozing a compliant board can bring unimaginable riches in a very short time.

For example, one Merrill Lynch executive, hired in August, had already received a $39 million bonus by the time the investment house was forced a month later into a takeover by Bank of America.

That kind of misplaced generosity flies in the face of what Byron believes are a company’s responsibilities to all of its “stakeholders,” including employees, investors and the communities where it does business. That’s his definition of the outdated concept of enlightened self-interest: “If it really is enlightened it’s going to have regard for others,” he said.

If this sounds old-fashioned … it is. The theme of Byron’s latest book is “old ethical principles for the new corporate culture.” The simplest of them is “tell the truth, and we haven’t been doing that for a long time,” he said.

Students he interviews give Byron optimism that our better selves will return.

They seem to understand that valuations apply to what we have but values are immaterial, by which he means not worthless but priceless.

If you go

On Thursday, Rev. William Byron, S.J., will deliver two lectures on business ethics, one for students and one for the general public. ‘Making of an Ethical Executive’ will be presented from 3:30-4:45 p.m. at the Burke Auditorium in the McGowan School of Business at King’s College.

A cash bar reception will be held from 6 to 6:45 p.m. at the Woodlands Inn & Resort, Plains Township, followed by ‘The Power of Principles: Ethics for the New Corporate Culture,’ from 7 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 per person.

Reservations are required; call Dr. Zola at the Ethics Institute at Misericordia University at 674-6201.


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