PRLA Summer 2019

22  • PENNSYLVANIA RESTAURANT & LODGING matters • Summer 2019 LEGAL DOCKET The Attorney ask Jane G. Davis, Esquire SHUMAKER WILLIAMS, P.C. General Counsel, Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association Jane G. Davis, Esquire AS A WOMAN ATTORNEY, I have an interest in following stories about prominent women business executives. A few months ago I saw a reference to an article about Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, that appeared in Vanity Fair. Going online, I found “The Miseducation of Sheryl Sandberg” by Duff McDonald ( Vanity Fair, 11/27/18). Reading the article, which discussed the multitude of problems Facebook has encountered, I realized it was less a criticism of Sheryl Sandberg’s leadership than of the Harvard Business School from which she graduated and the approach to leadership business schools in this country generally take. To quote from the article: “The truth is, Harvard Business School, like much of the M.B.A. universe in which Sandberg was reared, has always cared less about moral leadership than career advancement and financial performance.” The article quoted Jeff Skilling, a Harvard Business School graduate and convicted felon after the Enron debacle, as saying in a class that he didn’t feel a business executive had an obligation to stop making and selling a defective product and that “it’s the government’s job to step in if the product is dangerous.” Unfortunately, what went unrecognized there is the fact that, when the government has to step in, the results are very often less than optimal for the organization. When I think about an organization that seems to be emblematic of the problem of American business executives not providing appropriate moral leadership to keep their organization out of trouble, Wells Fargo comes to mind. Watching Wells Fargo in recent years has been to witness episode after episode of breaches of customer trust. In 2016, it was revealed that over 5,000 Wells Fargo employees had been involved in establishing phony accounts in customers’ names, numbering in the millions, in order to meet aggressive sales targets; this resulted in short- term profits and customers incurring unnecessary fees and other costs. How Can You Use Leadership to Prevent Legal Disasters for Your Organization?