Years ago, companies were known for their honesty, their integrity, and their good products. They had to be to stay in business and keep good image they wanted to project. This gave their company a good name. As many of you know, we come from New York. Kodak, Grumman, and IBM were major companies in down and upstate NY. If you got a job with them you had a job for life, and once you retired you didn’t have to worry. Today, people are losing their medical benefits, their pensions, their life savings; due to businesses thinking of only bottom line.

Every time you open a newspaper or watch news today you hear about another business’ unethical business practices. They cook books, take bonuses they don’t disclose, while they expect employees to work for less. There is something very wrong with this picture. It also says to our future entrepreneurs, that this behavior is alright, just don’t get caught.

Like Bob Schiffer, I’d much rather go back to time when businesses dealt with us in an ethical manner and didn’t only concentrate on lining their pockets, like today. Also, like Bob, I think what we need are different teachings in our business schools. The philosophy of today’s teachers, needs to re-vamped to reflect philosophies of old. What we need is to “throw out new, and bring back old”. As Bob said, if his mom was teaching today, students would get a completely different view…an old fashioned one. Kudos to Bob’s mom!

Copyright 2003 DeFiore Enterprises