How CEOs are being held to higher ethics

An executive working long hours, away from the family on business trips, develops a close relationship with a subordinate executive of the opposite sex. More than business is transacted.

These days, companies are starting to further define the boundaries for such relationships. Some businesses are asking employees to sign "love contracts" that give information about sexual harassment and let both parties admit to "consensual sex."

On Monday, Boeing's board of directors took another approach - forcing out the chief executive officer for an extramarital relationship with another employee.

Corporate observers believe Boeing's move may foretell a higher standard for personal behavior in the post-Enron world. In effect, the Boeing decision says that the chief executive, while no longer the meanest businessperson on the planet, has a responsibility to set the highest ethical standards in the company.

"Every CEO knows about this today," says Steve Scalet, an assistant professor of philosophy at Binghamton University in New York. "Will this have an effect? To some extent it has to."

Workplace romance is an issue that has dogged companies for as long as there has been a water cooler. But in recent years, it appears these kinds of relationships are multiplying.

"The workplace is a meeting ground," says John Challenger of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago outplacement company. "People work longer and travel more, and there are not as many places to meet people, especially when you are sitting alone in front of a computer all day."

Although some companies may be willing to look the other way when it comes to office dating, infidelity is a tougher issue. For many Americans, the issue of adultery joined everyday discourse when reports surfaced that President Clinton had had an affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky.

Of course, infidelity was around well before Clinton's problems. Some studies have found that in the 1940s, 50 percent of men and 25 percent of women confessed to extramarital linkups. A University of Chicago study done five years ago found 25 percent of married men and about 15 percent of married women had cheated.

A 2003 Oxford University study, conducted over seven years, found that offices with both men and women (in comparison with single-sex offices) increased the divorce rate by 70 percent.

Examples abound of CEO indiscretions. In the early 1980s, the nation debated the adulterous romance between William Agee, then president of Bendix Corp., and his blond 29-year-old assistant, Mary Cunningham.

Affairs have roiled the executive ranks at such companies as Ashland, Staples, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Missouri, and General Public Utilities.

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