GETTING BUSINESS OFF STEROIDS

Oct 13, 2026

The essay compares how character and culture shape behavior in business and sport, arguing that organizations mirror personal habits through defaults that are dynamic and alterable. It frames misconduct as rooted in choosing inappropriate ends, misidentifying values, and forming destructive character habits. Using events in business and Major League Baseball, it proposes a three-question decision-making tool to guide leaders toward excellence rather than victory at any cost.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLetters

FormatPDF

Pages20

Reading Time7 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

The Recent Past

Occasional Paper OP-180 October, 2010 GETTING BUSINESS OFF STEROIDS Maximilian B. Torres IESE Occasional Papers seek to present topics of general interest to a wide audience. IESE Business School – University of Navarra Av. Pearson, 21 – 08034 Barcelona, Spain. Phone: (+34) 93 253 42 00 Fax: (+34) 93 253 43 43 Camino del Cerro del Águila, 3 (Ctra. de Castilla, km 5,180)– 28023 Madrid, Spain. Phone: (+34) 91 357 08 09 Fax: (+34) 91 357 29 13 Copyright © 2010 IESE Business School. GETTING BUSINESS OFF STEROIDS Maximilian B. Torres 1 Abstract Culture is to organization as character is to person. Each guides the activity of the entity that possesses it — the organization or the person — as if by default. These “defaults,” however, are dynamic, changing and alterable, rather than fixed. Character and culture depend upon one another. And, both hinge on freely selected means to one end or another: excellence or victory. This essay applies these concepts to relatively recent events in business and sport to illustrate the common workings of character and culture in these different fields of endeavor. It proposesa decision-making tool for operating on personal character and organizational culture. Keywords: character, culture, decision-making, sports. 1 Assistant Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law in Ada, Ohio and Visiting Professor of Business at IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. NOTE: This chapter was prepared for “Doing Well And Good: The Human Face of The New Capitalism", Ed. Friedland, J., Information Age Publishing Inc., Ethics in Practice Series, Chapter 1, pages 3-29, 2009. Copyright IAP. IESE Business School-University of Navarra GETTING BUSINESS OFF STEROIDS Introduction The present publication heralds a “new capitalism” with a “human face.” The “old” has lavished society with wealth and prosperity beyond the wildest dreams of a Smith or a Marx, but at a cost many fear is not sustainably affordable.1 This chapter proposes a simple decision-making tool in the form of three questions upon which to construct a political economy grounded in the nobler part of a person — beyond fear and greed, while cognizant of them. This task is crucial, for ultimately it is the activity of persons (i.e., personal action) taken collectively which engenders, bolsters and foments sustainable prosperity on the one hand or social calamity on the other. It analogizes problems in business to problems in sport, specifically the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball, and argues that corrupt human behavior in every activity is rooted in: 1) a personal selection of inapposite ends ; 2) the consequent misidentification of values, and 3) the embrace of misidentified values resulting in 4) potentially destructive, personal character habits. It is important to study social phenomena from the perspective of what occurs within an individual person because, as the scholars following the classics taught, agere sequitur esse:“doing follows being,” or what you do comes from what you are. Problematic actions such as“cooking the books,” shredding documents in anticipation of litigation or taking steroids proceed from bad habits (vicious character) in otherwise-normal people. Recent problems in business and sport — personal first, social derivatively — are manifested as “cheating” and 1 Though this chapter will not directly address the crisis that engulfed Wall Street, the financial sector and, indeed, the world’s credit and capital markets in Fall ’08, the analysis, descriptions and prescriptions contained herein apply equally to it. At bottom, the credit crisis of ’08 which threatened to plunge the global economy into a prolonged, severe recession and perhaps depression is the result of an ethical problem, imprudence, manifest in the reckless leveraging of home mortgages by house purchasers who couldn’t afford them, lending institutions that issued them without perfo

FAQs

What central idea does the essay use to connect character and culture?

It treats culture as organizational character and argues both are dynamic, guiding activity through defaults that can be changed. Character and culture depend on each other and hinge on freely chosen means toward ends like excellence or victory.

How does the essay explain unethical behavior in business and sport?

It argues corrupt behavior is rooted in selecting inappropriate ends, misidentifying values, and adopting misidentified values that lead to potentially destructive personal character habits. It links business fraud to “cooking the books” and analogous cheating behavior in sport.

What practical tool does the chapter propose?

It proposes a simple decision-making tool consisting of three questions. The tool is intended to help operate on personal character and organizational culture when constructing a political economy grounded in a better part of the person.

Oct 13, 2026

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