What I realized today after reading a New York Times editorial on Goldman Sachs is that many more CEOs in the financial services sector than we care to think, when they're home at night in the dark, are convinced they did nothing wrong.

In fact, they have every intention of taking similar risks again.

Why? Because they presume a fundamental truth: the manipulation of financial products is a necessary - even essential - element in a dynamic economy.  Because they feel they were justified in receiving government bailouts precisely because their financial strategies make the economy hum. Because the personal rewards of successful risk taking are too great. Because boards of directors still believe in their guts the Milton Friedman dictum that "the busines of business is business" and what's good for shareholders (read 'institutions') is good for all of us.

And in our hearts, even after fulsome apologies, promises of reform, compliant acceptance of a few minimal restrictions on bonuses, we know they will not change.

That's why the apologies seem so hollow, why there is such editorializing about whether an apology is enough. It isn't. Because, I hazard to guess, it's likely a lie.

CEOs must have a tough time deciding what to read among all the blogs, online news sites, management school journals and mainstream media which offer points of view on how CEOs can lead better. Alright, they likely don't read any of them.

Should they change their minds, here is a recent addition to the plethora of leadership punditry that may be worth watching: The Syd Blog is by Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. The blog is subtitled "Insight into the force and follies of leaders."  His latest post looks at how Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, who was stripped of his chairman title last week, may still lose his CEO position even though Bank Of America is run by what Finkelstein calls a "rubber-stamp board."

Sounds like Finkelstein would not be displeased.

More Fortune 500 companies are blogging, but the pace of growth is still shall we say restrained.

The full results of a study by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D. and Eric Mattson, CEO of Financial Insite
Inc., a Seattle-based research firm are available here and a summary of the key findings are in a news release by the Society for New Communications Research.

Of the findings posted in yesterday's statement, here are few of particular interest:

• 81 of the Fortune 500 or 16% currently have public-facing blogs, compared with 39 percent of the Inc. 500, 41 percent of the higher education sector and 57 percent of the nation’s Top 200 Charities.


• 28 percent of the Fortune 500’s blogs link to Twitter accounts


• 90 percent of the Fortune 500’s blogs have the comments feature enabled

Buried in a recent survey of corporate directors conducted by McKinsey is a finding that 29% of respondents report that one of the procedural changes corporate boards are making to deal with economic turmoil is "Promoting conversations that are more frank than usual"; further, 24% believe this is an additional change boards should make "to become more effective in managing the global economic crisis".

No mention is made of whether Twitter is a preferred tool for intermediating this new focus on conversation.

Spirited debates happen all the time when people talk about corporate responsibility (CR) especially now that our economies are stumbling along and evidence continues to leak out about the governance missteps that led to egregious examples of greed-driven shortsightedness.

Research studies and white papers on the subject also proliferate, at least as fast and as often as politicians blaming their predecessors for current problems.

Here are a few that have made their appearance recently:

• The Conference Board released the results of a survey yesterday on the future of corporate giving programs. Corporate giving officers are noticing their companies are concerned about their overall financial health when considering the allotment of their philanthropy dollars. Not surprising. But remember, public expectations about behavior -- and the punishment it inflicts on transgressors -- are not significantly influenced by random acts of kindness no matter how generous or strategic.

• Yesterday, the Rotman/AIC Institute for Corporate Citizenship also released what it calls "a real-world guide that helps business leaders understand
  and prioritize key social and environmental issues and identify
  opportunities as well as potential risks." Called 'What's a CEO to do?", it is described as a toolkit and is built on a model introduced by Rotman School of Management dean, Roger Martin, called the "virtue matrix" which he wrote about in HBR a few  years ago. I haven't had a chance yet to do a deep dive into it, but Rotman often produces worthwhile management frameworks. (Disclosure . . . I have an M.B.A. from Rotman.)

• The third is truly timely . . . an article in the Deloitte Review called "The Responsible and Sustainable Board. (Sorry I can't find a link to it but it is Issue #4, 2009). It includes a warning to boards of directors that "Even if your organization is disinclined to tackle CR&S issues voluntarily, you may ultimately have no choice if, as expected, regulatory requirements take hold." 

Maybe there will be some kind of retrenchment back into the philosophy of 'the business of business is business'. (Simply wishful thinking on the part of cave-dwellers?) Evidently though it doesn't stop the think tanks from thinking about it.