A Growing Corporate Club: The Founding Felon

What a headline--Had to post it. It's one of several good stories in Knowledge@Wharton's midweek email newsbrief. A snippet:

Since many founders spend the early years of their careers struggling to build their businesses, few have the kind of ethics training that is now a part of most professional managers’ corporate upbringing, Schweitzer points out. Companies, he suggests, should appoint a corporate ethics officer to help guide employees who find themselves in sticky ethical situations....

Founders who build a major company up from nothing often have a “blurred sense of boundaries,” says Schweitzer. Because start-ups usually require huge investments of both money and time, “there is no distinction between a founder’s personal life and company life. In some regard he or she is more likely to use the company as a vehicle for personal desires,” he says. A wayward founder may also be more prone to bypass a company’s normal checks and balances. “Founders in some sense are given more leeway because everyone at the company owes their position to them.”

Martha, Bernie, Ken, Waksal, Grass, Rigas--everybody's in the barrel. It does note that companies still run by rap sheet-free founders do retain a certain bottom line Je ne c' est quoi. Interestingly, marketing Professor Stephen Hoch reckons Martha's past her expiration date:

“Irrespective of what happens [legal appeals, PR rehabilitation, etc], her personality is past its prime,” suggests Hoch. “Maybe she can make a comeback, but I’m not sure whether she would see it as worth” the effort.

I dunno, Native American warriors had their "Vision Quest" and fought big scary bears... Maybe a Perp Walk and rooming with Vinnie the Blade isn't so outlandish for Masters of the Universe?

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PS: Scroll down for a piece on Laura Ries' Evolution of Branding: Divergence, Convergence, and Other Marketing Strategies