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Business Ethics: Remember When Enron was Overpriced?

Business ethics was a primary emphasis during my business education at Xavier University and Bowling Green State University . Among the sad stories of corruption over the last 20 years was the rise and fall of Enron. A number of officials at Enron managed to establish the energy/utilities company among a multitude of ambitious technology companies during the dot com boom and bust of the late 1990s/early 2000s. While I missed the opportunity to see Sherron Watkins speak at Xavier in 2003 , I did get to learn much more about Enron during MBA 583 class (now called MBA 5830) at BGSU in 2008 . The lessons learned remain with me today as I strive to be an ethical business professional and look to avoid the greed and deception that destroyed Enron. For reference, here is an article I wrote about Enron on Suite101.com . (As a side note, Suite101 has since changed its focus and no longer publishes articles like this.)   

Fairness & Justice

During a church sermon that I had heard late last summer/early last fall, a pastor addressed the issues of fairness and justice. I had originally started typing this blog post in September 2012 but, due to time & energy constraints, I never got past the first line! In terms of employment, organizational development, teamwork, culture, and other areas of practice and thought, I have thought about fairness and justice for a number of years now. From a distance, both values look to be clear and self-explanatory. Yet, when experiencing fairness or unfairness or justice or injustice, the terms are not so clear-cut. I will now focus in more on fairness and justice in the realm of organizational development--more specifically, in regards to leadership and management. On one hand, fairness and justice relate to equal treatment, equal opportunity, shared resources, and so on. On the other hand, fairness and justice relate to providing the best treatment, best opportunities, best resou