The High Price of Low Ethics: How Corruption Imperils American Entrepreneurship and Democracy (Essay‪)‬

Corporate corruption threatens democracy and endangers the advancement of entrepreneurship as one of the fundamental traits of economic life in the United States. In this article, Carl J. Schramm proposes zero tolerance for unethical business behavior. Compared with war or medicine, business ethics seem relatively simple. Honor contracts. Treat customers fairly. Be truthful about the condition of a commodity. Be transparent to investors. This is just to say, there is a high price to pay for low ethics. Interest in corporate corruption is a phenomenon that repeats with remarkable predictability. The age of Enron, Tyco, and Worldcom, along with the whispers of accounting irregularities in a host of companies long respected for their honesty, has loosed the hounds of business criticism. Past scandals have left us with volumes of reflective commentary that suggest little more than that bad people do bad things in bad periods. The lesson from the past is that corruption in business comes in waves.