As businesses grow across borders, questions of ethics and culture challenge business leaders. To what extent is ethical leadership based on universal values and to what extent is it based on cultural considerations? How do leaders determine the values that should apply across their global operations, and those they should leave at home? How do business leaders make good decisions that strike the balance between their core values and the core values of the societies where they do business?

Most approaches to crisis leadership focus on ordinary people who are forced to cope with extraordinary circumstances. But there are different lessons to be learned about crisis leadership through research with crisis professionals, like climbing guides, SWAT team chiefs, soldiers, and extreme sport coaches. What do people look for in leaders when their business risk or personal risk is so extreme that there may be no second chances? What are the moral obligations of leaders who, along with others, face extreme risk or crisis?

Over a multi-year period Victoriaâs Secret (a mailer of over 400 million catalogs annually) was the target of a protest campaign by the ForestEthics campaign. The campaign was designed to address Victoriaâs Secretâs use of paper drawn from logging in the Boreal Forests of Western Canada. The campaign included protest advertising, in store disruptions, protests at Victoriaâs Secret events, fax clogs at headquarters, etc. Two months ago the Victoriaâs Secret organization won an award from the ForestEthics campaign for its leadership in support of their environmental objectives. What drove the change of events? How does an operating manager frame situations like these? How does an operating manager balance profitability, the resource requirements of a business, and environmental issues? Through a chronologically organized set of events we will attempt to understand this issue and its broader implications for management of environmental issues.