Welcome!

It is an honor and a privilege to welcome our readership to the Valparaiso University College of Business Administration’s Journal of Values-Based Leadership. With an increasingly global economy, financial opportunities present themselves in both the developed and the developing world, and with these opportunities come the concomitant duties of greater accountability to a broader range of stakeholders and more conscientious stewardship of environmental resources. Legislating ethics has been the immediate response to incidences of corporate greed and wrongdoing in the recent past, but more pervasive accountability is yet to be fully addressed. The true call to promoting corporate responsibility rests with a new generation of leaders who infuse teamwork, sustainability goals, and respect for human and environmental resources into their daily decision-making activities.

Acknowledging the importance of this critical need for values-based leadership, this journal has been created, offering leadership ideas and views expressed by both business practitioners and leading academicians alike.

Michael McCuddy, Professor of Business Ethics at Valparaiso University’s School of Business, provides a general paradigm of moral leadership in his opening article, Fundamental Moral Orientations: Implications for Values-Based Leadership.” The Honorable Richard G. Lugar of the United States Senate makes specific application of leadership roles in defining the world’s energy crisis and identifying potential workable solutions. Co-authors and noted educators, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, Ph.D, describe how true leaders become authentic and credible only after identifying their own values and core beliefs. Joseph “Bud” Ahearn, Senior Vice-President of CH2MHill, one of the world’s largest engineering companies, and Katherine W. Dean, Senior Vice President of Personal Wealth Management for Wells Fargo, both offer practical applications of injecting principles of altruism into their respective management roles. Finally, Dr. Mark S. Albion, Co-Founder of Net Impact, provides both myths and examples of how to capitalize values effectively while James O’Toole concentrates upon defining the seemingly indefinable concept of Values-Based Leadership.

We hope that you will benefit from the insight of these noted individuals and will look forward to future issues offering additional perspective to assist in defining and applying principles of values-based leadership to both the workplace and the classroom.

--Elizabeth Gingerich , J.D.

Dear Friends:

Valparaiso University is a recognized institution of higher education devoted to developing people who can navigate the interactions among financial futures, private lives, public duties, and spiritual cores. It is our good fortune that Valpo has taken the initiative to create the Journal of Values Based Leadership and advance understanding of ethical and moral leadership. This journal will serve as a valuable resource for business leaders, academics and students in their pursuit of integrity, creditability and morality. The JVBL will inform and inspire its readers. I congratulate the JVBL on its inaugural issue and look forward to future publications.

Sincerely,

Richard G. Lugar
United States Senator