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Faculty Authors Book on Surviving an Ethical Misconduct Disaster

Robert Chandler

Robert C. Chandler, professor and chair of Pepperdine University's Communication Division, has published a new book titled, Managing Risks for Corporate Integrity: How to Survive an Ethical Misconduct Disaster (Thompson-Southwestern). Chandler co-authored the book with Lynn Brewer, former Enron executive and subsequent whistleblower of the Enron scandal, and O.C. Ferrell, the Bill Daniels Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Wyoming and founder of the Institute for Business Ethics at Colorado State University.

Managing Risks for Corporate Integrity breaks new interdisciplinary and conceptual boundaries by integrating the fields of business ethics, organizational continuity planning, organizational communication, and organizational behavior processes. The work, led by Chandler, is the result of over four years of his original research and scholarship in the area of organizational ethical misconduct disasters.

About the Book

Managing Risks for Corporate Integrity

Recent headlines have shown that ethical misconduct can prove disastrous for individuals and companies. Numerous high-profile scandals have thrown corporate America into an unprecedented ethics crisis, leaving no industry immune. Managing Risks for Corporate Integrity helps readers identify, illustrate, and define the business problem of ethical misconduct and lays out a practical guide to develop plans to prevent, mitigate, cope with, respond to, and survive ethical disasters in organizations across industries. It also illustrates how the process of ethical disaster recovery planning involves an assessment of an organization's values, development of an ethics program, an ethics audit, and the ability to create contingency plans for potential ethical dilemmas.

Chandler's collaboration with Brewer and Ferrell has launched the work onto the international stage, attracting attention from the news media as well as businesses, corporations, and academics concerned with business ethics, management, organizational communication, and organizational behavior.

Copies of the book are available at Amazon.com.

Selected Testimonials

"The discipline of disaster recovery is a continuous process of analyzing, preventing, mitigating, and eliminating risks from the inherent threats of natural disasters, technological disasters, and various man-made events. Each threat has its unique characteristics, with subtle or devastating results and consequences that can be brief or enduring. A visit to various corporate Web sites often finds corporate governance links on their homepages, which is a clear indication of the growing prominence and affirmation of ethics among organizations."

Robert S. Nakao, Executive Publisher, Continuity Insights

"Ethical misconduct is commonly overlooked as an enterprise business continuity risk. This book sequentially provides take-and-use guidelines for effectively preventing, preparing for, and responding to this insidious risk. This is a groundbreaking book on crisis management that applies to leaders in every workplace at every level of an organization."

Bruce T. Blythe, CEO, Crisis Management International, Inc.

"Ethics is often looked upon as ‘doing the right thing' and rarely as a risk to be managed. This book provides us with not only an insider's look at what can happen when ethical risks are not managed, but also provides guidance in managing the crises that can potentially follow the discovery of ethical misconduct. The key is to understand what risks face your organization and then learn to manage the risks accordingly - this book provides a roadmap to achieving this objective."

Michael Evans, Partner, Ernst & Young, Quality and Risk Management.

"Global corporations should be all about doing the right thing. The cultures represented in today's global workforce define right from wrong differently. It is therefore incumbent upon business leaders to set the highest standards of ethical behavior. Success without integrity is essentially meaningless."

Thurmond B. Woodard, Vice President and Chief Ethics, Privacy, and Compliance Officer, Dell Inc.

About the Authors

Robert C. Chandler is Communication Division chair and the Blanche E. Seaver Professor of Communication at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. He is a nationally recognized scholarly researcher, corporate speaker and trainer, and seminar leader. He specializes in the fields of organizational crisis communication, including ethical misconduct disasters; crisis management team selection, training, and leadership; communication and conflict; intercultural and multicultural communication dimensions, including workforce diversity; as well as employee and organizational communication assessment and enhancement.

Lynn Brewer is a former Enron executive and author of Confessions of an Enron Executive: A Whistleblower's Story. Since leaving Enron, Brewer has become an outspoken advocate for corporate integrity and has received numerous awards in recognition of her contributions to society. She is the founder and CEO of the Integrity Institute which assesses and certifies the structural integrity of organizations at their own request for the benefit of their stakeholders.

O.C. Ferrell is the Bill Daniels Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Wyoming and will join the Anderson Schools of Management at the University of New Mexico later this year. He is also editor of www.e-businessethics.com and has developed a business ethics certificate program. He has been quoted in USA Today and appeared on the NBC Today Show. He has served as an expert witness in several high profile cases relating to ethical and legal disputes.