Managing workplace ethics : how to improve your organisation's ethical health and achieve organisational integrity

Abstract

In recent years, the issue of management or governance of ethics within organisations in the public and private sectors has come to the fore. For several valid business reasons organisations have been forced to become socially responsible, to act with increased ethical sensitivity and to report on the organisation's performance relative to its ethics statement to all stakeholders. Organisations that recognise the strategic importance of ethics within business and pro-actively manage ethics reap the benefits of stakeholder confidence, public trust in the organisation and a good reputation. An increased awareness of the ethical dimension of the governance of organisations has also shifted the focus away from the approach that had to satisfy the owners only, to a more inclusive approach focusing on the needs, rights and interests of all the stakeholders or constituencies that are affected by the organisation's decisions and activities. Improving governance within organisations includes considering the ethical implications of all actions undertaken and consistently striving to improving the organisation's ethical health by formally managing its business practices with ongoing reference to the stated ethics of the organisation. Managing ethics within an organisation is the responsibility of senior management, who should buy into the fact that ethics can and should be effectively managed. Senior management should take a strategic decision to increase the ethical health of the organisation by establishing a formal ethics management process, building ethics into its strategy and identifying ethical leaders to set the example and drive the process. Organisations aspiring to "walk the ethics talk" should recognise the fact that organisational ethics is much more than a code of ethics with a few ethical platitudes to aspire towards. Organisational ethics is about making ethics real within the organisation by devising and implementing a formal ethics management framework within the organisation. A formal ethics management framework typically includes an ethical organisational culture, ethical leadership, an ethics strategy, an ethics management team (ethics officer, ethics committee, integrity unit), and a formal ethics management process. All these ethics initiatives should be effectively utilised to ensure an improved organisational culture based on agreed ethics, applied and monitored continuously to ensure sustainable ethical health for the organisation.