Banks and other financial institutions play a key role in any business. And like all other businesses, banks have undergone profound changes in the past two decades, largely because of technology. John Reed lived through these changes, driving many of them, during his 35-year career at Citibank. He was at the forefront of ATM development, international banking growth, and electronic banking. The merger of Citicorp and Travelers, which he engineered with Sandy Weil, was ground breaking both in its kind and in its size and scope. You will find his fascinating comments on banking, mergers, careers, money-laundering, and other issues in our IBTE Conversation, beginning on page six.
Many of you responded to our Ethix 22 Forum Question about whether businesses today must be transparent and ethical to be successful. Some of those comments can be found on page 15. We are continuing to probe the question “why be ethical in business?” Our own “Nine Good Reasons to Run a Business in an Ethical Manner” are on page eleven.
For our next Forum (to be published in our May-June issue) we invite your evaluation and suggestions — which we will post in Ethix 23. Until we get this answer as clear and compelling as possible, we will not find it easy to motivate better ethical behavior.
Gerard Beenen has another Ethix film review — this time on the sci-fi thriller Matrix. You will also find reviews of Eric Schlosser’s bestseller, Fast Food Nation, and Dinesh D’Souza’s The Virtue of Prosperity. Al’s Technology Watch highlights five critical issues in today’s technologically transformed workplace. David’s Benchmark Ethics ponders the difficulty of navigating between moral cowardice and its counterpart, the “rush to judgment.”
We are hoping many of you, especially in the American Midwest, will be able to join us on April 18 for our one-day seminar in Naperville, just west of Chicago. We will explore “Ethical Business Leadership in an Era of Global Technology” with some outstanding business leaders joining the discussion. It’s going to be a great day together.
Al Erisman
Executive Co-Editor
David W. Gill
Executive Co-Editor