"To lead means to be ethical. This is the opinion of Antonio Argandoña, University Secretary of IESE, who spoke at the University of Navarra on "How to Generate Values in an Organization." "If a manager is not ethical, he or she is sure to make the wrong decisions," he added. This Full Professor of Economics intervened in the XXX conference of Educational Centers "Culture and center educational", that organizes the department of Education of the School of Philosophy and Letters for the directors and teachers of educational centers.

Antonio Argandoña spoke at lecture on the ethics of business and explained "how the organization discovers, defines, lives and transmits its values". In his opinion, "ethics is fundamental to the proper functioning of a business. Managers do not take into account that on many occasions it is the lack of values that causes something in their organization to go wrong or that there are behaviors that are not understood," he pointed out.

"Values," he continued, "guide our decisions and behaviors and, therefore, influence the conduct we have towards others. It is necessary to reflect on them, since they have many effects, both on the person himself and on those around him."

According to this expert, "the members of an organization work for different motivations, but it is necessary to ensure that they all have a common goal ". Therefore, for this Full Professor, "to lead an organization is to elaborate strategies that develop the capabilities of the members of the group, to achieve the distinctive competencies that the organization wishes to have in order to fulfill its mission statement". A leader," he added, "is a person whom others follow because they are sure that he or she wants the best for everyone and also for the organization".

An organization must have a life of its own

But do the values of an organization exist or are they just the sum of the values held by its members? According to this professor at the University of Navarra, "an organization is not just a group of people: it must have a life of its own and solid, shared values". In this sense, he pointed out that "it is not good for there to be total consensus on the values of a business. It is important to agree with agreement on the fundamentals, but diversity and discrepancy are also necessary. Otherwise, there is a risk that an organization will stifle people's values".

In any case, Antonio Argandoña does not believe in ideologies, codes or creeds, but in the process followed to write them, in the discussion that precedes their essay: "The values of a business are quite stable, but they can change. If a value does not work, it is abandoned and thus ethical progress is made. If we lived an infinite number of years we would learn to be totally ethical".