Trendspotting: Sex, Lies and Integrity

By Angie Argabrite, Friday, June 29, 2012, at 9:01 am.

Right now, corporate distrust is at a record high: First there were the Enron and Bernie Madoff scandals, then that whole Wall Street crisis, followed by revelations about John Edwards. More recently, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn was dismissed (with a $6 million severance package) after allegations that he had an inappropriate friendship with a young female employee. And then there’s Scott Thompson, Yahoo’s recently ousted CEO, who falsified his collegiate pedigree. (Thompson is one among many chief executives who’ve been busted for falsifying a résumé; there’s MGM Mirage CEO Terry Lanni, Notre Dame football coach George O’Leary … the list goes on.) Experts say that more than half of résumés are embellished, with creative types more likely to engage in dishonest behavior. We wonder: Are CEOs more dishonest now than they once were? At least one study says that integrity levels are on the decline among all of us—as we’ve grown more acceptant of lying, adultery, drug taking and traffic violations. The only area in which tolerance for dishonesty hasn’t increased: benefit fraud, indicating that we hold corporations to higher standards than we even hold ourselves. Underlining the growing need for a strong corporate communications team, don’t you think?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2012 at 9:01 am. It is filed under Brainsnacks, Trends and tagged with authenticity, Bernie Madoff, Best Buy, Best Buy CEO, Brian Dunn, C-suite, C-suite leadership, CEOs, chief executives, communication, Enron, honesty, John Edwards, leaders, leadership, leadership trends, lying, Rielle Hunter, Scott Thompson, transparency, truthfulness, Wall Street crisis, Yahoo, Yahoo CEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.