Lessons in Leadership and Ethics

The Fuqua School of Business is forming a $5.1-million center that will create inventive courses and materials, conduct conferences, endow distinguished professorships, and support research and training on leadership and ethics. As part of this initiative, Mike Krzyzewski, Duke men's basketball coach, will join Fuqua's faculty as an executive-in-residence at the center, teaching and writing on leadership and ethics during the basketball off-season.

The Fuqua/Coach K Center of Leadership and Ethics (COLE) was announced in October during the opening session of the Coach K and Fuqua School of Business Conference on Leadership on the Duke campus.

Fuqua Dean Douglas T. Breeden says he expects Duke's Center of Leadership and Ethics to be a "path-breaking place" where the leading thinkers and corporate executives from around the world will come for training and to advance key leadership and ethics issues. "It will influence the way students, academics, corporations, governments, and nonprofit organizations view leadership and ethical foundations of business and policy in the twenty-first century."

"We are delighted that this center's founding partners include many of Duke's most prominent business leaders," Breeden says. "Corporations are increasingly being questioned regarding their leadership. Failures to lead ethically have resulted in serious breaches in public confidence and support. Today's competitive environment and global economy require managers at all levels to have strong leadership skills. We have the opportunity through this center to address these issues."

Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics will work closely with COLE through the George C. Lamb Jr. Professorship, newly created by his wife, Elizabeth, in her husband's memory. It will fund a scholar at Fuqua who will have an active affiliation with the institute. The institute will also work with Fuqua students on projects focused on moral courage and leadership.

The center will develop business-school cases and teaching materials on leadership and ethics, create short, nondegree courses for Fuqua Executive Education, serve as a global library for leadership writing and research, give research grants to faculty members at Fuqua and other schools, and sponsor leadership conferences each year with Coach K and Fuqua students. It will also sponsor a lecture series on leadership and ethics.

Allan Lind, the Thomas A. Finch Professor of management, and associate professor Sim Sitkin will serve as the center's faculty co-directors when it officially opens in January.