Debating Corporate Ethics
Tamar Frankel, a LAW professor, puts corporate scandal up for discussion online.
School of Law Professor Tamar Frankel, an expert in financial regulation, corporate governance, and the Internet, is moderating an online discussion on law, ethics, honesty, and trust for the International Bar Organization. The IBO is developing an online forum to encourage collaboration among its members around the world.
“It is crucial as a first step for people from different disciplines and different positions and cultures to know and understand each other’s point of view,” says Frankel, who is Michaels Faculty Research Scholar at LAW. The discussion topic is financial firm E. F. Hutton’s slide from its position as a giant of the brokerage world in the 1970s to a company beset by criminal charges of mail and wire fraud in 1985 — an issue that resonates in today’s world of stock-option scandals, Enron, and WorldCom. Drawing on material from her 2005 book Trust and Honesty: America’s Business Culture at a Crossroad, Frankel asks respondents to explore how the failures of E. F. Hutton could have been avoided and what can be learned from the story.
The discussion on corporate ethics can be viewed at the IBO Web site.