'Does a corporation have a soul?' to be topic of Warrington Lectureship in Ethics and Leadership

Kenneth West

Has corporate leadership lost touch with reality? Has it lost its soul? Does a corporation have a soul?

Those are just a few of the questions that B. Kenneth West, senior consultant for corporate governance for TIAA-CREF, will address from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Oct. 26 in Room N130 of the Business College Complex at Michigan State University as part of the Sylvan T. Warrington Visiting Lectureship in Ethics and Leadership.

"Many of us are uneasy about the state of corporate America," said West, who retired in 1995 as chairman of the board of Harris Bankcorp of Chicago after 38 years of service. "Revelations about Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and others have undermined our confidence that the free enterprise system is in ethical hands.

"The soul of a corporation, like the soul of an individual, is defined by its values," he said. "Those values have their roots in the traditions of the organization. Tom Watson, the icon leader of IBM for many years once said, 'to survive in a hot market, a company must be willing to change everything about itself except its basic beliefs.' Clearly, it's management's job to articulate those values and live by them for its employees, its customers and, indeed, all of its constituents to see."

West, who has dealt with questions of ethics throughout his career and often lectures on the subject, is a leading authority on corporate governance and has served on several corporate boards. A native of Carthage, Ill., West joined Harris Bank after graduating from the University of Illinois and serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy.

Jeannine Warrington James (BA '57, Human Ecology), and her husband, Edward R. James (BA '56, Economics), bequeathed money for the Sylvan T. Warrington Visiting Lectureship in Ethics and Leadership in honor of her father.

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