I don’t know about you, but I cringe whenever I see a businessman cast as the villain. In today’s politically correct world, corporate executives are among the few stereotypes still tolerated. Even politicians have discovered that attacking “corporate criminals” is a sure applause line. After 40-plus years in corporate life–a career of which I am unabashedly proud–I am both offended and disquieted.

I’m offended because in my experience, corporate executives are overwhelmingly among the most law-abiding citizens. Regardless of whether we agree with new regulations, once they are legal we immediately act to assure compliance.

I am disquieted because the U.S. economy cannot continue to prosper without a strong corporate sector. Our reputation inevitably affects our ability to compete for talent and to survive punitive legislation. Success is clearly threatened the more we are treated as pariahs.

Unfortunately, we have brought about much of our reputation through unethical behavior. Everyone is acutely aware of the headlines of gross malfeasance. The “dishonor role” of senior executives who have become symbolic of corporate decadence are household names. But if these were a case of a few bad apples, the stigma would not be so pervasive.

The sad fact is a great deal of recent corporate behavior is seen by the public as unethical. It appears our basic objectives are no longer consistent with society’s concept of ethical standards. Sometimes it takes something drastic for the public opinion pendulum to swing back. I believe the scandals of late will help move the dialogue in that direction.

When I started in corporate life, my first mentor preached a mantra of responsibility to ALL of our stakeholders: employees, customers, communities and shareholders. Our success was a function of our ability to maintain their trust. This was one facet of our commitment to being responsible corporate citizens.

But after the ’60s and ’70s, a focus was placed on creating shareholder value. This was a healthy reminder that mindless growth and diversification are inconsistent with management’s responsibilities to the enterprise’s owners. Yet the consequence was to reduce this constructive discipline to a redundancy equated solely to share-price appreciation.

Corporate responsibility too often was seen as something of a quaint, irrelevant belief and corporate management lost touch with the broader interests of society. Here are a few examples of corporate behavior that have generated a public backlash:

• ELIMINATING PENSIONS–It has become too easy to abandon commitments made to employees’ retirement benefits despite record profitability. The claim is the corporation can’t tolerate the risk to reported earnings of defined benefit plans, given new accounting standards. The reality: risk is being shifted to the individual employee, who lacks the know-how to manage these critical risks safely.
• OUTSOURCING–It has become too easy to outsource jobs instead of making existing plants globally competitive. In an era of just-in-time shipments and acute sensitivity to the cost of money, it is counterintuitive to conclude the best solution is to move production to the other side of the globe.
• EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION– It has become too easy to rationalize the explosion of senior management total compensation. Today’s disparity in compensation makes a mockery of the phrase “our people are our most important asset.”

I maintain that ethical behavior is rooted in competitive success that is a function of innovation, differentiation, an understanding of customer requirements and fundamental productivity improvements. When this is trumped by a get-rich-quick appeal of brokering existing assets, leveraging debt and abandoning the social contract with employees, corporate ethics are inevitably compromised.

Not only is this morally repugnant, it is stupidly shortsighted. Corporate America can only successfully compete globally in the long term if it has the full support of the societies in which we operate. Breaking laws and violating corporate codes of conduct represent clearly unacceptable behavior.

In a more profound sense, allowing long-term ethical values to outweigh short-term profits will justify the stereotype of corporate villainy that is already an accepted characterization in contemporary culture and politics.