Page 10 - Toyota Under Fire

FOREWORD

Honor is now an integral part of our academic culture, from the
admissions process, to the curriculum, to, most notably, the grad-
uation ceremonies.
The explicit, public commitment of taking the Oath has
changed the culture of Thunderbird for good: it has shaped con-
versations inside and outside the classroom, and it has helped
remind faculty, staff, students, and alumni of the tremendous
responsibilities management has in society to create sustainable
prosperity worldwide.
In the last few years, the movement has spread. A group of
Harvard Business School students launched the MBA Oath in
2009, and student groups around the world have signed on. A
group of Young Global Leaders at the World Economic Forum
created a Global Business Oath to encourage CEOs to make a
public commitment to professional ethics. And a coalition of fac-
ulty, business leaders, students, and international organizations
has established the Oath Project Foundation to help catalyze a
movement to shape the values of managers around the world.
The history of the Oath is a great example of how difficult it is to
change culture as well as an example of the tremendous impact
a change of culture can have in shaping conduct. Toyota’s reac-
tion to the recall crisis, the company’s ability to turn crisis into
opportunity for improvement, is another.
Effective leadership is not defined by heroic acts at times of
crisis, or by clever decisions along a complex contingency tree,
but by consistent efforts to nurture and strengthen an effective,
adaptable, principled culture. And those efforts can be made only
by leaders who have strong principles themselves. These efforts, as
Liker and Ogden point out, start long before any crisis. The critical
role of leaders at a time of crisis is not to personally resolve it, but
to serve as role models of the values and culture of the company,

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