As Hank mentioned, the Business Roundtable has been quite active in this period of unfortunate failure in corporate governance that we’ve witnessed over the last several years. Members of the Business Roundtable have been outraged by the kinds of accusations that have been made and the actual evidence of wrongdoing that we’ve seen in certain instances in corporate America. And that has animated the membership of the Roundtable to be quite active in these areas in corporate governance, in establishing the principles that we presented in corporate compensation -- now, in tacking the issue of ethical governance. And we are now moving to try to take this next step that we think will be very important in this process.

In our principles of corporate governance, we said that one of the first duties of a board of directors is to hire competent and ethical senior management. And in order for that to be done, we have to ensure that there is a constant supply of those competent, ethical managers available to businesses. And we think that the efforts that we are undertaking are going to be of great help in doing that.

Our overall goal is to help restore the trust of the American people and American investors in business corporations. And the reason for that is that business corporations are vital to the economic well-being of the country. They are the greatest (indiscernible) of economic growth that the world has ever seen. It is where jobs and opportunity come from. It’s where wealth is generated. If we cannot make our corporations function effectively, the entire nation will be affected, whether they are a shareholder or whether they work directly for one of the major corporations or not.

And so we see an obligation to reach out and take all the steps that we can come up with to try to help make corporate America successful. That’s also been the mission of our great business schools -- to train the leaders to head the major economic enterprises of the nation. So it’s quite natural that we would turn to our business schools and universities to join with us as partners in the endeavor that we are undertaking.

We see a direct link between research and teaching in the process of creating a generation of leaders who have a strong ethical understanding, but more importantly, can spot ethical issues as they are being presented to them and reason as to what is the appropriate thing to do in real time and take the appropriate actions.

The initiative that we are announcing today is the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics. And I am proud to be able to be part of this announcement. This Institute will be like no other institute in the country. It’s a direct response by the CEOs of the Business Roundtable to the outrages of the past few years and a reflection of our commitment to improving the role of ethics in the American economy.

A number of things will make this Institute unique. First, the Institute will be housed at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia, one of the leading business schools in the nation. But also it will draw on faculty from all over the country, including from the Harvard Business School, the Smeal School of Business at Pennsylvania State University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and many, many other universities from around the country, where the leading researchers, teachers and academics on the topic of ethics and business reside.

And as the institute gets going, we hope and expect that we’ll be able to attract more and more outstanding academic leaders to participate in this work. It will be unique as well because it will be a site for state-of-the-art research on real issues that executives face in the business world today. I love Ed’s title of working on applied ethics because that’s really what we are talking about - how ethical decision making can be applied in the real world.

The Institute will develop an executive-level ethics curriculum and provide executive business ethics education so that business leaders will not only learn about the issues but also the application of them through a variety of educational methods. It will compile best practices and serve as a clearinghouse for information on ethics for businesses and the general public. And all of its work will be shared with schools and corporations around the country.

Probably the biggest difference that this institute lodged at a business school will have than any other is the support of the 150 CEOs who are members of the Business Roundtable. This will tie together in a way that I don’t think has been done before -- the leaders of major enterprises and the teachers and researchers on these topics -- so that we will be sure to have as close to a real-world experience as can be developed.

But we know that this endeavor is but one of the things that we can do as business executives. We know that we have to continue not just to support things like this Institute but also work to, as Chairman Donaldson of the SEC has said, embed ethical behavior into our corporate DNA. And that has to start with a commitment at the top by the CEOs.

There is no silver bullet here. We are trying to take all the steps that we know that can move us forward. But we believe that this Institute is a very important and vital step that’ll not only assist our companies but also I think it will assist the thousands of companies throughout America as they work to achieve the highest standard of ethical leadership within their own enterprises.

Now it’s my pleasure to introduce to you Robert Harris, who is the dean of the Darden School. Aside from leading one of the foremost business schools in the nation, Dean Harris has shown a consistent interest in the issues of business ethics. Indeed, as a former Chief Learning Officer of United Technologies, he has recognized the important value of business and academia working together. And we are delighted to have him and the Darden School as a very vital partner in this endeavor.
 

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