Seminar on Ethics & Values In Public Life

Seminar on Ethics & Valuesin Public Life - Every day leaders make decisions that are shaped by their values. Some of them are small, affecting a few people for a short time. Others are large, setting the long-term direction of an organization or a community. And still others are deeper and even more enduring, determining who they are as moral persons and the shape of the world in which they and future generations will live. In looking at ethical leadership for a changing world, we are left, therefore, to ponder the question posed by Socrates, "What is a virtuous man, and what is a virtuous society?" Of course, today we are more likely to ask "What is a virtuous man or woman and is it possible to build a virtuous society?"Let me turn first to the idea that the focus on private virtues that saw the emergence of a small, but noisy group of virtuecrats near the end of the last century is likely to be matched in the new millennium by a focus on the public values that drive our institutions and empower leaders.