In situations like this, Miguel Alzola, Ph.D., associate professor of ethics at the Gabelli School of Business, said the decision-maker’s choices aren’t necessarily a matter of right or wrong.

“There can be conflicts between right and right, from conflicts in time management to conflicting shareholder values,” he said.

“The answers are not that clear, and that is what creates opportunity for students to engage in a conversation.”

A ‘Win-Win’ Mindset

Alzola teaches courses in corporate social responsibility and business ethics. “Our best students have a win-win mindset,” he said. “They recognize that it’s in the best interest of the shareholders to protect employees and treat customers well.”

His research focuses on character-based ethical theories in business. Alzola found that people make distinctions between the virtues that they attach to being a good human being, and the character traits that they need be successful in their professional roles.

One key question that he is exploring is whether one’s character can be corrupted by participating in improper business practices.

“It’s undeniable that you have a social role that you play in every group in which you belong,” he said. “These groups can have an impact on the way you perceive whether your actions are a problem or not.”

Examining the Underlying Principles

Prior to joining Fordham in 2008, Alzola worked in the oil industry during the ‘90s in his home country of Argentina. Corruption, bribery, and favoritism were widespread in the industry at the time. The experience inspired his interest in virtue ethics and moral psychology.

Alzola reviewed case studies in leadership and business in which individuals strayed from their values. He also explored the different ways people frame a problem, in order to choose an alternative course of action in tricky business dealings.

In many of these situations, the decision-maker is faced with disparate interests: Employees want higher salaries. The shareholders of a company demand hire revenue. Meanwhile, customers want better service.

“We try to provide a platform to initiate a conversation among the students, which is not only connected with the case studies, but also with their own values,” said Alzola. “It allows them to look at their convictions critically. “

Mainstream business ethics tend to evaluate different choices based on the consequences of the decision-maker’s actions or the means they use to achieve their desired outcome.

Since there is a greater emphasis on whether the decision-maker’s action is permitted or prohibited, Alzola said the character of the decision-maker is often overlooked.

“Ethics is not only about what you do, but how what you do reflects on who you are, and who you will be as a result of performing the action,” he said.

Making a Better Choice

In his courses, Alzola has advocated an integration of business, legal, and ethical outlooks to help students effectively dissect contemporary business dilemmas, from pay equity and privacy protection to conflicts of interests and corporate espionage.

“Psychology has found that the more sophisticated you get in framing a problem, the more likely you’re going to behave ethically,” said Alzola. “Framing is a key part of good decision-making.”

“It’s about finding long-term solutions to short-term conflicts,” said Alzola. “You have to think about the company, 10, 20, and 30 years from now.”

He said the onus is also on business leaders to develop organizational structures and systems that help people to choose better.

“Part of it is recruitment, and the other part is internal development,” he said. “Leaders have a responsibility to create systems that are aligned with what people want to do and what they ought to do in order to be better at what they do.”

Kevin Jackson, PhD, earned his first nickname, Jazz Jackson, while playing piano in his Sarasota, Florida high school stage band. His second nickname, Socrates, arrived after he replied to a question from his law professor by positing a new question.

His got his most recent nickname, Dr. J, after he sat in on piano during a live performance with his son Brendan’s progressive rock band, Crisis Team.

Jackson is a man of many talents and identities, the most visible being his role as Professor of Law and Ethics in the Gabelli School of Business and author of Virtuosity in Business (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). A trained classical pianist and composer, with numerous original compositions to his name (listen below), Jackson the musician performs regularly, through his company Virtuoso Jazz Enterprises, at corporate functions and at venues in his hometown Princeton, New Jersey. He also does scoring and arranging for films and new media and creates interactive performances to encourage improvisational creativity among co-workers. In 2012, he performed at a Fordham Consortium function, improvising on piano and using PowerPoint to illustrate temporal similarities between rhythmic pulses in musical scores and stock chart fluctuations.

Nowadays, the professor is exploring new ways to blend his musicianship and his scholarly pursuits. But it was a circuitous, tumultuous route, beginning when he was a middle-schooler and his teenage brother, Jay, asked his parents: “Why don’t you give Kevin piano lessons for his birthday?”

“I had this lingering paranoia that it was too late to be starting an instrument, so I practiced doubly hard,” recalled Jackson, who last month performed with his brother Jay, a percussionist, mathematician, and computer scientist, at the Rochester Fringe Festival in

upstate New York. “I began studying at the Butler Conservatory in Sarasota.” Although he said it normally takes kids 10 years to complete the conservatory’s course, he was “so driven” by music that he went through the entire program in just one year, moving on to advanced study with Grey Perry, a master piano teacher.

Music was Jackson’s focus going into college, and he chose a rigorous jazz program at the University of North Texas (“Have you seen Whiplash?” he said. “It was that.”)

And then he took a philosophy class.

“I got so inspired,” he said, “It was a big world out there.” Just like that he changed his major.

“This is the joke on myself,” Jackson said. “I decided not to go into music because I would not find a career … and [then I]chose an even worse field—philosophy.”

Even though he found he loved the study of ethics, the nagging reality of a needing a paying profession kept interfering with his humanities pursuits. So he enrolled in law school at Florida State and studied law from a broad, humanistic viewpoint. Once he had his JD, he practiced law and went on to earn a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Maryland. Eventually, he found a perfect fit teaching law and business ethics. He has been teaching the two ever since—first at Georgetown, then at Fordham.

“Throughout all of this, I could never give up music,” he said, proud to have passed that love on to his son Brendan and daughter, Wenlan, 13, already a virtuoso violinist at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

At last month’s Fringe Festival, Jackson and his brother Jay, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, performed original compositions in a comedic tribute to author Kurt Vonnegut. The brothers played their music, together with a troupe of dancers and computer-generated dolphin images, from a satirical stage set dubbed Riff Raft—an “eco-friendly sailing vessel composed of discarded wine corks.”

Music has power to bring people together, said Jackson, but he sees a particular value in musicianship for the business community—virtuosity. In this case, it consists of applying the discipline of musicianship to practicing business. And it’s an idea that goes back to ancient thinkers, he said.

“Plato thought that music shapes the soul. And there is a lot to that,” said Jackson. Virtuosity, he said, is a musician’s self-imposed discipline to master technique first and carry it forward to perfection. Many businesses could learn from this way of thinking, he said.

“So many businesses just treat law as something to either ignore or to do the bare minimum necessary to comply with,” he said. “But the musician’s mind thinks in terms of very high standards . . . seeking something so perfect, and so excellent.

“I want to encourage this way of thinking and to explore its implications,” he said. “[And] to imagine what if business could be more like music—a self-regulated enterprise, a collaborative, creative venture bringing people together in joy and celebration?”

— Janet Sassi

“It’s immensely important that we find solutions that regain the reputations of our well-established institutions,” said Anne M. Mulcahy, chairman of Xerox. “My advice to colleagues [in corporate America]is we have to stop whining and take our place at the table and really make sure that we are part of a constructive change.”

Mulcahy was one of a dozen speakers from the worlds of business, law and finance who shared their knowledge about the future of domestic and international commerce at a two-day Fordham conference on enhanced regulation.

“Enhanced Regulation: Integrity in the Global Financial Markets” drew more than 200 leading figures from regulatory and corporate institutions, as well as Fordham business students. It was co-sponsored by KPMG LLP and held at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

Mulcahy said she is a big believer in the right of government to encourage transparency and disclosure through regulations. But she warned that sometimes regulations have a one-size-fits-all approach.

“If we are not careful, regulations can undermine the role of management and its need to do what is best for shareholders, employees and customers,” she said. She added that some elected officials might be misinformed about the business world.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C., and am often surprised at how … lawmakers don’t understand how companies work; how to create wealth; and what it takes to create jobs, benefits, salaries and equity in products that have been part of the value that business delivers,” she said.

Conversely, Corporate America must understand that lawmakers are put in a corner when stakeholders “rightfully cry foul” about inequities in the system, Mulcahy said.

“They have to react by proposing new legislation that may result in more barriers, bureaucracy and complexity,” she said. “It’s a reality and we’re going to have to deal with the consequences of it. But we also need to participate in the debate and help educate and have our voices heard.”

In day one of the conference, a panel of experts in the financial world discussed “Ethics on Wall Street.”

“When I think of ethics, I reflect on my employer in the early 1990s, Charles Schwab, which I consider to be the single greatest work experience of my life,” said Marty Cunningham, president and CEO of Hudson Securities. “They taught us vision and values and embracing change. If you look at it on a grand scale, when the market legitimizes itself, investors will engage and there will be an opportunity for everyone to have a piece of the revenue pie.”

Doreen Mogavero, president of Mogavero, Lee & Co., and the first woman from the floor to be appointed to a board position of the New York Stock Exchange, said the tough regulatory environment will vilify those in the financial world.

“It may be slightly overboard that to go to the bathroom, people on the floor have to clock in and clock out and there are cameras everywhere,” she said. “I’m happy that we have them to keep everyone honest. At the same time, I’m unhappy we have to have them.”

Also on the panel was Carolyn Dolan, founding principal of Samson Capital Advisors.

Lisa Utasi, director and senior trader of ClearBridge Advisors, moderated the discussion.

The event was hosted by John Tognino (FCLS ’75), chairman of the Fordham University Board of Trustees, and Barbara M. Porco, C.P.A., M.B.A., Ph.D., director of program development for the Fordham University Schools of Business Administration.

“This forum brought together great minds, representing different industries, to share their perspectives on ensuring ethical behavior through responsible business practices and sound fiscal policies,” Porco said.