It is hard to pick just one meaning as I think there are many. Leadership matters; it is easy to talk but much harder to live your values; it is easy to start with decent people and end up with a disaster – which is troubling to all of us, including Clayton Christensen, who was a classmate of Skilling’s at Harvard; you need to define success as a multi-faceted construct that is based in values most important to you if you hope to have a guide that might aid you in getting too far off course – money and success are fine, but if they are all you have to guide you it is only a matter of time before you are lost.

Andrew Wicks
Academic Advisor, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics
Professor of Business Administration, The Darden School

The main similarity is that in both cases, major institutions played fast and loose with the incentives that the profit-centered objective of business presents. In the Enron scandal, the acts were clearly both unethical and illegal; the "perps" certainly knew that what they were doing was wrong. In the acts leading up to the current economic malaise, many (certainly not all) of the perpetrators probably did think that promoting home ownership by extending mortgages to less qualified borrowers was a good thing. Until the bubble burst, the risks may not have been apparent to all. Selling collateralized mortgage instruments with substantial proportions of "bad" loans in them does not, in my view, fall into the "taking excessive risks" category, however.

Thomas Jones
Academic Advisor, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics
Boeing Endowed Professor of Business Administration, University of Washington

One difference that many people have questioned is why the scandals of the last period – Enron, WorldCom, and the like – resulted in public convictions for criminal misbehavior. This global economic crisis is different; in many respects, the root causes of this crisis may not be criminal in nature, but instead have resulted from poor decisions of risk management – putting firms, their assets, and their reputations on the line. These decisions do not make the current situation any less of an “ethics crisis” than the period of Enron. In fact, this time it may make it even more so an ethics crisis due to the fact that these poor business strategy and risk management actions destroyed far wider swaths of shareholder and stakeholder value than the narrow criminal behaviors of one or two firms. The lesson for all of us is to recognize that “ethics” has value when it is embedded throughout the business strategy and decision making processes, not just as an ancillary function.

Dean Krehmeyer
Executive Director, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics

The scope of impact was different. The collapse of Enron harmed its investors, employees, the Houston community, but the financial fallout was not a national economic crisis, never mind a global one.

Enron, WorldCom and other scandals harmed public trust in business, but not the general welfare. Companies that destroyed value were allowed to fail. Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, etc. are largely accounting scandals. The law was violated. People could identify the wrongdoers, prosecute them, and send them to jail. The public viewed this with some sense of justice, that wrongdoers reaped what they sewed.

Not so with the current crisis. The bailout, while necessary to prevent a potential depression, has left many people angry.

Brian Moriarty
Director, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics
Adjunct Professor, The Darden School

I see lots of similarities – systematic failures, lots of stakeholders and firms that participated or turned a blind eye, many stakeholders who suffered massive losses while a few insiders gained immensely. Just not on the same scale. The other big difference is these folks knew what they were doing; I believe some firms that contributed to the financial crisis had no idea what they were doing or the risks they were taking – whether from ignorance, hubris, or failure to understand a highly complex system (or all three).

Andrew Wicks
Academic Advisor, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics
Professor of Business Administration, The Darden School

Until we get a handle on the enormous compensation packages given to corporate executives, I doubt that trust in business will rise very much. And, absent legislation/regulation, these packages are unlikely to get any smaller. Therefore, ....

Thomas Jones
Academic Advisor, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics
Boeing Endowed Professor of Business Administration, University of Washington

Economic recovery alone will not restore public trust in either business or government. Until someone tells a credible story, offers a compelling vision of how business and society can mutually prosper while mitigating the risk of another systemic disaster, the public mood will remain anxious and wary.

People keep asking what the Occupy Wall Street movement wants. My guess is they want the same thing most people want—a story, a believable map of how to get out of the current mess to a brighter future where aspirations seem attainable through education and hard work.

People want business and government to work together for the common good, and they are angry because they believe this is not happening. Multiple studies indicate that social mobility is more difficult and less likely in America than in Canada and many Western European countries. America's identity as the "Land of Opportunity" is in serious jeopardy and this contributes to discontent across the political spectrum.

Brian Moriarty
Director, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics
Adjunct Professor, The Darden School

Public trust has been low and I expect it to remain low going forward. I do think the present moment represents something different and potentially very troubling – that could potentially lead us to question fundamentals of our system and value set, which in turn could impact our culture and institutions for a long time. The financial crisis, and what it has spawned (particularly if things continue to get worse), threatens our belief in the American dream, the fairness of global capitalism, and the system of cooperation we depend upon to generate value. If these foundations become further frayed and start to come undone, we could see wide-spread social and political change. This isn’t necessarily “bad”, but it would be tumultuous and could set us on a very different course as a nation.

Andrew Wicks
Academic Advisor, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics
Professor of Business Administration, The Darden School