As society enters the next millennium, ethics transgressions continue to make headlines. A Walker Research poll found 57% of public employees were aware of an ethical violation in the past 2 years. Similarly, an Ethics Officer Association-sponsored poll found that 48% of corporate employees admitted to unethical or illegal acts in 1996. Most governments have ethics boards or commissions, and corporations have ethics or compliance offices. Despite the existence of this ethics infrastructure, violations continue. What do these respective offices do? This article posits that there are important lessons to be learned by a cross-fertilization of knowledge between private sector ethics officers and public ethics administrators.
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