Business Ethics: An Oxymoron
An oxymoron: the juxtaposition of contradictory words or concepts. That is what we have with the term “Business Ethics”. The very contradiction that is inherent in this latter phrase is an indication of the challenge that individuals who work for organizations face as we all approach the resource limits of this planet.
The global concept of business is fundamentally based on the principle of competition for limited resources. That is the practice of maximizing one’s gains at the expense of others. This ultimately has the effect of creating a hierarchy of those who have and those who have not. This is really paramount to “eliminating the enemy” i.e other human beings.
The concept of ethics is based fundamentally on moral principles. That is, principles of right and wrong as dictated by the core human values that we as human beings hold dear in our hearts. These are core values of fairness, love, compassion, integrity, respect, peace, joy, fulfillment, harmony, beauty, etc.
In other words business is about engaging in activities that essentially go against our core human values. Now this may come as a surprise to some because most consider business as normal a human activity as breathing. It is this inherent contradiction that has led to the spate of business executives coming under the ethical spotlight in recent years. In a sense this outcome was inevitable and the trend will continue unless we begin to redefine the principles on which business is carried out.
In order to help this along I suggest that it is important to examine the forces that led the founding principles of business practices astray in the first place. These forces consist of negative beliefs and emotions that we as human beings fall prey to but which are inherently not in alignment with core human values. Such beliefs come in the form of “I won’t survive if I don’t compete for my share of the resources”. This belief is based on the underlying negative emotion of the “fear of not surviving”.
Now some may begin to say that this is our reality, so there’s no need to question it. I would however like to take you, if you wish to follow me, on a journey of self discovery that may help you to recognize something you have always known but have temporarily forgotten. Here we go.
Read the following statement to yourself:
A) “The fear of not surviving motivates me to work hard, earn my keep and therefore survive so that I can live a happy and fulfilled life”
Do you believe this? Yes, No?
Now read this to yourself:
b) “The fear of not surviving, makes me afraid that I won’t survive if I don’t work at a job that I hate, that has nothing to do with what I really love in my heart, deprives me of the time and energy that I need to do those things I really enjoy, it thereby eats my life, it also causes me to do things to other human beings that I would never do even to my pet, it causes me stress, predisposes me to illness and death”
Do you feel this is true for you? Yes, No?
Now clearly statements A and B are yielding contradictory results but you probably found yourself agreeing with both of them. Isn’t it strange that you could agree with two contradictory statements at the same time? How can contradictory statements be true at the same time? Well in fact they can’t!
For example:
C) I’m sitting down, and
D) I’m standing up
Are essentially contradictory statements and these cannot be simultaneously true for you, can they?
So, if you look at this situation closely, I think you will recognize that one of the statements (A or B) has to be false.
Read them again and see if you can determine which one is false for you.
To help you, just say to yourself: “I’m afraid I won’t survive” and notice how it makes you feel. Which statement, A or B more accurately describes how this statement makes you feel. I think that after some reflection you will notice that B is really the truth and A is the one that is false.
So if A is false and you were believing it to be true then were you lying to yourself about what this fear was doing to you? I think you will recognize that indeed this is what you were doing without even realizing it. Is this what you want to be doing, lying to yourself about this? What is the consequence to you of perpetuating this lie? Well I think you will see that it would mean that you would still be prone to being a pawn of the “fear of not surviving” and this would perpetuate the state described in statement B above.
Is this what you want? If not then just make a sincere statement asking that the lie and the fear be cleared from your life and see how you feel.
Now if you followed this so far you will likely notice that something significant may have shifted in your outlook towards your life. For those less successful I just wish to add that this is not an easy exercise to convey in print so please accept my apologies if you are feeling confused or frustrated.
Now let me return to the issue of “business ethics”. In my view the ethical problems faced by the business community will continue to escalate in future if it does not begin to realign its fundamental principles with core human values. In order to do this it is my view that our individual and collective beliefs about our environment and ourselves will need to be challenged.
What Happened to Business Ethics and Responsibility?
I remember a “Business Ethics” seminar I took in college that confirmed everything my parents had taught me as a child. I heard clearly that capitalism was not an easy way to steal money from others but a way to make an honest living by providing a service or product to people who needed and wanted it. This secured my desire to become a businessman. During my career, I have held different positions in small, medium and even large Fortune 100 corporations. I have had the opportunity to work with great visionaries, empty “suits”, assembly workers, and, yes, those individuals who only wanted to get all they could while doing as little as they could.
The one constant I have always seen in the U. S. free market system is that a quality company with a quality product or service using quality employees always seems to do better over the long term than the snake oil vendor. Successful companies work hard to inject ethics and morals in everything they do and they take responsibility for their actions. Quality business leaders do not expect a “bailout” or feel they even deserve one. If they cannot assemble a team of enthusiastic employees who can achieve success, they clearly understand and believe they should fail and do something else. I have been involved with several business bankruptcies and none of the owners or employees of these companies felt anything but shame and failure for having left suppliers with debt, employees without a job and customers without a supplier. These leaders might have failed but many of them took their failure personally and worked as hard as they could to pay off all their debts and satisfy everyone who lost due to their bankruptcy. Those without ethics and morals merely started up a new corporation with a new name and immediately began to take advantage of others and repeat their failure.
I have been absolutely amazed at the automotive industry that very easily and arrogantly asked for taxpayer bailouts and are quick to blame the current economic crisis rather than themselves and their management teams. In our free enterprise system, a company that cannot manage its assets properly, has a product or service that the public wants to buy, and makes a profit for its shareholders goes out of business. Granted its employees, customers and suppliers lose money because of this situation but then they all find a replacement company and continue on with their futures.
Our free market concept is not extremely complex but must include ethics, morality and responsibility to achieve the highest of success and quality. The U. S. business model, for many years, was that ethical and quality concept the rest of the world not only envied but hoped to become. Even the Russians and Chinese, our fiercest Communist enemies for decades, are now embracing capitalism because we have become the world’s superpower with our ethical and quality business model.
Now here we stand about to enter 2009, and hopefully the last year of our largest economic downturn in the past 50 years, watching the CEO’s of the “Big Three” fail to admit their lengthy management failure which has allowed labor costs to be double any other auto manufacturer and provided exorbitant retiree pension and health care costs. For decades the “Big Three” bowed to their labor unions and were able to pass all the costs along to the consuming public with little or no competition to keep them honest. They fought and fought against every U. S. government agency that sought higher C.A.F.E. standards when oil was $25 a barrel but now believe they can retool and achieve amazing products and standards within the next two years if the US will only loan them a mere fifty billion dollars. This equates to $200 from every American man, woman and child living in the U. S. Our auto industry was, for several decades, the best in the world and an example of what innovation and technology could achieve. Many of us, in the business world, studied case after case on General Motors in business school and were impressed with the success and vision of the U. S. auto industry.
While this is an astonishing and sad commentary on the ethics and morals of the management of these companies, I find something else even more disgusting. The media and many politicians are now discussing a “pre-packaged bankruptcy” as a possible answer to their management failure. While all of us have sometimes slipped from our ethical pedestal, this suggestion is the ultimate loss of ethics and responsibility in our society.
I always advise my clients that bankruptcy is a process to be avoided at all costs. It is the point of ultimate failure by every business entity. If a business is having severe problems, the company and its management should do the right thing and negotiate with all parties to solve its problems and do everything to stay out of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is only good for lawyers and takes over complete control of a business. How many businesses run by lawyers and courts ever succeed? Bankruptcy, by definition, normally requires the vast majority of all parties lose money and should only be used as an absolute last step. Bankruptcy has no ethics or morals. It carries a stigma for many years and labels the company as being unable to negotiate, succeed or perform a valuable service for the public. What makes anyone want to buy a car from a manufacturer that entered bankruptcy because they could not properly manage their company?
The auto industry should take the responsible and ethical route to solve their problems. They should negotiate with their employees, unions, retirees, suppliers and customers to fix their issues. They should also immediately work to change their corporate culture and reinstate a sense of ethics, integrity and responsibility in their employees which probably entails changing senior management and the Board of Directors who have now demonstrated their inability to run their companies correctly.
I am not naive enough to believe that the unions, employees and some suppliers will do what is necessary to become part of the solution and bankruptcy could ultimately still be required to achieve the end goal of saving these companies. This would be a gross injustice to all concerned because the legal costs would be astronomical and the company culture would probably not see the change needed to again make the auto industry the best in the world. I would love to be able to discuss with my grandchildren their business college case studies on General Motors. I remain very optimistic that ethics, morals and responsibility will once again become a part of the U. S. business culture.
As to our politicians, I am not as optimistic since we have seen that many of our elected officials vote based upon constituent polls and campaign contributions from lobby groups. I agree with the vast majority of Americans who give the US Congress a very dismal approval rating. Their agenda is focused more on their next election than on ethical and responsible decisions for their constituents. It is also a sad commentary on America’s sense of ethics and responsibility when a convicted felon in Alaska came very close to winning reelection to the Senate. His Republican colleagues in the Senate are extremely happy he did not win because many of them would have had to take a new poll in their states before deciding whether to allow a felon to be seated in the next session of Congress.
A very positive note in this situation is that a review of American history reveals that ethics, morals and responsibility become more prevalent in the US after a serious financial recession. Religion and personal introspection seem to become more important to the American citizen when his or her savings and retirement accounts loose half their value. Church attendance, volunteering at charitable operations, spending time with our children and even family dinners all see increases during recessions and I’m sure that will be the case when history is recorded on the 2008-2009 recession. Those politicians running for reelection in 2010 should be prepared for this moral shift.
Our current economic downturn is not the last we will see in our lifetime and the US will recover and be better afterward as has been the case in the past. However, I do hope that we can say the same thing about our ethics, morals and business responsibility.
Inspiration Ethics - The Value of Integrity
Integrity - Noun; Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code; the state of being unimpaired; soundness; the quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness.
The date is January 16, 2009. The day after US Airways Flight 1549 pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger of Danville, CA, maneuvered his crowded passenger jet over New York City and ditched it in the Hudson River - successfully. All 155 passengers and crew are safe and miraculously escaped major injury - just bumps and bruises really. National media is abuzz with reports and first-hand interviews with passengers, now all safe, warm and dry, along with their rescuers and safety experts describing the ordeal. NBC dubbed the accident “Miracle on the Hudson”.
Pause now. Think about your values as if you had to list and describe them. What are your core values? If you are like most individuals and organizations Integrity shows up on your list of values. But what does it mean, this word, ‘integrity’ (perhaps the ultimate virtue)? What does it mean to you? How does your value for integrity show up for others daily? How is it you developed your integrity? How might you further develop this quality? Why does it matter?
For most of us, integrity means something like “doing what you say you will do”, or “how you act when no one is looking”. These are good tests of integrity, but don not really explain how one develops integrity. Structural integrity for a building is defined as “uncompromised ability to safely resist the required loads”. Structural integrity of a person could be defined as “uncompromised ability to appropriately resist challenges to virtue”. How do we develop this steadfast adherence to a strict moral code, this ’sound’ response to difficult circumstances?
Like most things we do well, integrity comes from practice. In fact, the proper manner with which to refer to the quality of integrity as a human value would be “to practice integrity”. A person speaks and acts with integrity out of practice. Integrity is the result of preparation and choice, when one has lived long enough to have recognized one’s own innate capacity to act on whim, caprice or selfishness rather than deeply-held principle. Integrity comes from training and increases with the quality, length and adherence to the intent of that training. Integrity follows solid neural pathways, developed over time, that stimulate certain attitudes and habits, which produce seemingly instinctual right actions. But these actions are not based on animal instinct; right actions result from human desire and practice.
My favorite value-based definition of leadership is “authentic self-expression that adds value through relationships”. This includes relationships to both people and events. When self-expression begins to consistently add value over time, through every human encounter, through every decision and through every split-second reaction to events, then you have integrity.
Aspire to have integrity: practice discerning what is right, saying that you will do right, how and why you will do right, and doing so whether or not someone else is paying attention.
You can bet there are at least 154 people in this world who are thankful for the value Chesley Sullenberger has added through their brief relationships. What do “Sully” Sullenberger and Flight 1549 have to do with integrity? Sullenberger is reportedly an U.S. Air Force Academy grad who flew F-4 fighter planes in the 1970s while in the Air Force. He started flying commercial jets in the 1980s. “He is about performing that airplane to the exact precision to which it is made,” says the wife of her hero-husband. In addition to working for US Airways, he runs a safety consulting firm focused on the psychology of keeping airline crews functioning in the face of crisis. He has been an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. I understand he is also certified to fly gliders - skills that surely helped land an Airbus A320 with both engines on fire in a controlled descent on a nearly frozen river rather than in the middle of a neighborhood of one of the world’s most densely populated cities.
Instinct didn’t take over for Sullenberger as he steered his jet toward those icy Hudson waters, practice kicked in - the practice of integrity. This is a man who decided earlier in life that safety and human lives were important enough to him that he would dedicate himself to preserving those ends. He trained, he studied, he learned day after day, year after year with those ends in mind. What once began as a pilot’s tenuous first flight, over the course of 40 years of practice became unconscious competence - the right attitudes, habits, decisions, actions and demeanor to save lives in a crisis.
Reflections to inspire personal growth in Integrity (with your learning partner)
How would your life be different if you were to practice integrity with greater intent and consistency? What can you do daily to increase your integrity? What is your personal code of ethics; what must you change to demonstrate them more fully? Find an accountability partner or hire a coach to help you practice integrity and take these actions:
Integrity is the glue that binds your other virtues. What are your other core values? Why these?
How do these values, together, define who you are, how you think and act, and how you are viewed by others?
What words and behaviors do other people observe of you daily that demonstrate your values?
What purpose would you have your life lead toward that you are willing to practice day after day, year after year, to be prepared for the chance event that may provide the ultimate test of your Integrity?
What specific attitudes, habits and behaviors must you practice consistently to become the person of Integrity you aspire to be?
Describe an experience or event when you were at your personal best and demonstrated Integrity.
Describe a current situation in your life that, in your heart, you could apply the same level of Integrity as you did in your example above.
Make plans to touch base with your learning partner in the next month about how you each are practicing Integrity. Hold each other accountable.
There are no natural leaders. Leaders have developed qualities that attract others. Leadership is when others follow you because of who you are and where you are going.
Business Ethics and Profit
Every time you open the newspaper you find reports about controversies on business ethics of large corporate houses and even government organizations. Today, ethics seems less important than making profit, which is the ultimate goal all over the world. In this scenario a question raises its head with timidity: ‘is it not possible to make profit ethically?’ A question we all need to answer for ourselves.
Ethics and profit - complementary or opposites
In certain countries ethics comes on a poor second when it comes to doing business successfully. “Successfully” here means generating large amounts of surplus. For this purpose the business houses need to expand their territory, coverage and products to capture large chunks of the market.
Creating a base for such activities can be done in two ways:
(1) go the hard way - advertise, consolidate, build brand and image in the national and international market segment you prefer. This involves money, effort and tremendous perseverance
(2) go the easy way - bribe your way through government and other corridors which would help you create a niche market almost overnight. Often the amount of money and efforts spent on bribes is less than
Which would be the best way, in your opinion? You would say, ‘the ethical way’, of course. But you would be amazed at how many would still go the other way. Why? Because, the keyword today is “results” and here “results” means profit. Corporate houses feel that their stakeholders would appreciate the fact that they generate wealth for them - by whichever means.
While it is true that the public does like a hike in the profits, the ‘by whichever means’ acceptability is debatable. If you go down to the grassroots, ethics is still an important threshold in the values of the common human being.
The general public still values basic business ethics more than profit, though globally the consumerism movement makes it seem otherwise. Ethics to most is synonymous with trust and truth without which no real value addition can be expected or enjoyed.
Placida Acheru is an accredited Personal and Business Coach working with individuals and Start up Businesses to achieve maximum performance. She holds a Master’s degree in Guidance and Counselling,worked twelve years in public administration where became Senior Assistant Register of a college. She decided to take her career forward by pursuing her passion for business and becoming a coach;to further complement her knowledge and skills she added to her portfolio the following certifications: - Performance Coaching, Neuro- linguistic Programming, Mentoring, Emotional Intelligence and Train the trainer. Her goal is to be committed to your goal.
http://www.the-bod.blogspot.com
http://www.thebusinessonlinedirectory.biz
Ethical Dilemmas - When Billing Becomes Theft
Focusing on Profits at Any Cost Crashed the American Economy
Greed and a lack of an internal moral compass produced our current economic meltdown - incredible numbers of people so focused on making astronomical profits that ethics went right out the window. Corporate executives have a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders and investors that they completely ignored. Now, the American taxpayers are bailing out industries that had our funds in trust.
It Gets Started When We Take Ethical Shortcuts
The interesting thing is that it’s easy to point fingers at the people in the news to complain about how they committed theft and ignore our own ethical shortcuts. This past week I got some insight into how difficult it is to set our own ethical limit.
My Ideal Is When Both Client and I Win
I had the great good fortune recently to participate in training with a major small business consulting firm. I was excited about being there because the trainers said the things I wanted to hear about doing what’s best for both the client and their company. Everybody wins. I love it!
Even though I tend to be idealistic in how I approach caring for a client, I too have failed at times to live 100% according to my values. Sometimes personal survival temporarily overrode what I felt was right because I “needed” to keep my job. So this past week was good because I got to see other viewpoints that softened my rigid standards a bit.
Sincere Statements Can Mean Different Things to Different Speakers
But in the end, one executive’s story showing how he cared about what was in the client’s best interest, back when he was a field consultant, really stuck with me — because it showed me how far apart we could be in our viewpoints while both of us sincerely say the same words.
“Joe” told the story of a client who hired his company to identify the problems his daughter was having taking over his business. Within thirty minutes, “Joe” had identified the problem but knew the job would close the minute he told the client what he found so he had to find ways to delay telling the client that his daughter was gay and the company’s very macho employees would not work with her. After three weeks of billing, he finally decided that it was unfair to the client to bill any more. He needed to tell the client that she preferred an “alternative lifestyle” and his employees took issue with that. Once he finally made it clear that they wouldn’t work for a gay woman, the job was over.
When the Value We Provide Is Less Than We Charge, We’re Stealing
My initial self-righteous position was that he took advantage of that client just to get his billing numbers - and bonuses - up. But as I thought about it, I realized that even I would have had to bill for some number of hours, doubtless several days while I looked for ways to turn the situation around. Once I was convinced that nothing I could do would enable her to run the company, I would be obligated to inform the client, even though the job would “crash.” To drag it out is the same in my mind as stealing. The client or customer is paying for value - value equal to or greater than what we are charging. When we can no longer provide that amount of value, we are now robbing him.
The Ethical Dilemma We Face Is Knowing Where the Cut-off Is
The difficulty lies in identifying where that point is. This is the ethical dilemma that most of us in sales and marketing, in consulting, and in business management face. It’s the first step onto a slide that eventually leads to Enrons, Worldcoms, sub-prime mortgage collapses, and all of the other self-serving business decisions that produced our current worldwide financial crisis.
Tips to Avoid Going Too Far
So how do we know where we need to stop billing a client — or selling a customer — on our solution if we are to avoid becoming a thief?
- Follow the Golden Rule - “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
- Follow the two rules that Richard Maybury gave in Whatever Happened to Justice
1) Do all you have agreed to do, and
2) Do not encroach on other persons or their property.
- Ask yourself, how would I feel if I was the client paying for this advice?
1. Your advice or products and services need to provide benefits equal to or greater than the price you are charging.
2. Do no harm - even when your advice is desperately needed, if your client can’t make payroll after paying your invoice, something is wrong with that picture.
Ethical dilemmas are challenging because there is no black and white answer. Ethics hold you to a higher standard than human laws. But it is a standard that requires you to decide. In my example of “Joe” above, only he knows if his billing was legal theft because only he has all the facts that went into determining what value he provided his client. Life is full of grays and very few black and white choices. Maybe that is why customers treasure relationships they can trust. The simplest standard to be sure you are giving the value your customer or client is paying for is, “How would I feel if the positions were reversed?”
Would you like to reprint this article? You may as long as you include this blurb in its entirety: John R. Aberle is a consultant, coach, and speaker on sales and marketing, teaching a transformational style of selling that makes it fun and mutually rewarding for the customer as well as the salesperson. By helping customers buy, you develop long-term customer relationships, minimize sales rep turnover, and make profitable sales. This style of selling fits naturally into the social networking approach to marketing. Go to http://www.HelpCustomersBuy.com for my latest blog post or to http://www.JohnAberle.com for my website.
Ethical Leadership - A Must For Customer Loyalty
Businesses still do not understand that customer loyalty begins with executive leadership who demonstrates consistent ethics and values found within the organization’s strategic business action plan. When the executive leadership behaves badly, these actions are shared inside and outside of the organization.
For example, Indiana is an at will employer. Businesses can terminate employees without any notification. Yet most of these same firms expect 2 weeks notice when employees leave. Now does this attitude or belief demonstrate high ethics and values; or is there a thread of hypocrisy running through these organizations?
With the tightening of the global market place (and yes it is global even if you believe all your business is local), many organizations are cutting back on employees from downsizing to outright terminations. Usually what this means for mid-size to larger organizations is the slashing of the Education and Training Departments’ budgets as well as personnel.
Why is this area usually is the first to go is because of these two continued beliefs within the American business culture:
Education is not really valued.
The inherent value of human capital is not really understood by many American companies
In business, there exists what I have labeled the Osmosis Learning Belief. Stand next to someone and you instantly become a great leader or a super star goal achiever. Employees need to be developed where they demonstrate ethical leadership. They require assistance in developing their talents and further strengthening them so that the organization becomes even more competitive.
American companies and organizations with the exception of a few such as Southwest Airlines do not value human capital. Many employees especially below the executive level are viewed as “throw aways” for the belief is that the firm can always find someone cheaper and better. For some enlightened companies such as Toyota, they have realized the tremendous cost of downsizing their employees because of the investment that has already been made.
Each terminated employee represents at bare minimum 1.5 years annual tangible salary and benefits loss to the bottom line ranging from $30,000 to $200,000 plus. The intangible losses greatly increase that red ink and include:
Relationships those employees have established with external customers and other internal employees
Understanding of the ins and outs of the business
Additional growth in intellectual property (learning, training and development) by those same employees
Established loyalty and productivity
TAKE ACTION ETHICAL COACHING TIP: Evaluate your organization from an executive leadership perspective. Are you leading forward, proactively during these difficult times or are you leading backward, reactively? Customer loyalty is the result of ethical leadership beliefs and actions. So before you terminate that next employee, take the 30,000 foot view and determine the real losses to your business.
Want to develop ethical leadership? Take this free leadership skills assessment.
P.S. Do you know what your talents are? Learn more about your ethical leadership talents to help you maximize education based marketing.
Business Ethics and Values Do Not Have Expiration Dates
Walk through the aisles of any grocery story or even convenience store, pick up any product and you will see an expiration date. These dates are for your consumer safety as well as to receive the most benefit from the nutrients within the food product.
Yet, recently, I have come to observe that many individuals in business who profess to be true professionals as well as those in government are demonstrating business ethics or values with expiration dates. Initially statements specific to their behaviors are made without a date. Then realizing that change is more difficult than originally expected or will take additional effort a date is added. If the added date is not made, a new date pops up.
The work ethics associated with these behaviors become a moving object. As new dates are added, the impact of the quality decreases to those who are on the receiving end of these expiration dated values.
For example, how many times have we heard that during the tenure of this leadership or management team it will be the most ethical in the organization’s history? Then as time moves forward, we hear, not from leadership, but outside sources about unethical behaviors. Then leadership makes excuses and sets a new expiration date.
Why business ethics or values now have expiration dates may be connected to the relativism that has affected the U.S. during the last several decades. Relativism has many definitions, but essentially means that everything is truth and is relative to the individual. In other words, values become moving targets or simply are now produced with expiration dates.
The recent meltdown of Wall street, the bailout of Wall Street, the ponzi schemes, the individuals who knowingly violate the law and believe that they are above it are all examples of values with expiration dates. Even before these incredible examples, many of us heard this expression, “Do as I say, not as I do.” This is a values statement with an expiration date.
So how do business leaders and true professionals avoid values with expiration dates? First, make sure that you have a values statement that has been clearly articulated within your organization. Everyone from the bottom up to the top down understands the specific acceptable behaviors and equally unacceptable behaviors.
Next, enforce the values statement. Recent surveys of college graduates and high school students show an increase in cheating and that cheating is acceptable. These surveys also reveal that these cheating young people believe that they have high ethics.
The old expression everyone does it is another justification of having a values statement with expiration dates. In other words it’s okay to cheat to get the best grade in school and when I leave school, I will no longer cheat. If you believe that, I have a bridge I would like to sell you.
Having a values statement may cost you some business in the short term. However, in the long term you will gain far more than any potential short term loses.
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How To Build A Business Ethics Program
Recent corporate financial scandals have highlighted the importance of business ethics and legal compliance. Yet a recent National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) survey of 280 corporate CEOs and directors found that “only one of three directors felt that they were highly effective in ensuring legal compliance”.
Ethics in Business
Most companies realize that they need to develop and implement a business ethics and compliance program.
An effective program can:
• Establish a code of conduct that reduces risk of criminal behavior
• Detect wrongdoing, foster quick investigations, minimize consequences
• Demonstrate company’s ethical/legal philosophy during an investigation
• Reduce fines if company is found guilty of wrongdoing
• Enhance company reputation and stature
Looking at the Options
But how do you build an effective program? Companies find themselves with three options to build the program:
• Develop in-house from scratch
• Hire an external consultant
• Use a pre-written manual
And most of these companies learn a few lessons - sometimes the hard way.
Making a Strong Company Policy
Developing a program from scratch can be very time consuming and costly. Also, the company might not have the knowledge or understanding of the complexity involved. But hiring an external consultant is not always a cost effective option either. So what’s left?
Developing Your Business Ethics Program
By using a pre-written template or manual, many companies have found it easier to develop their business ethics program. And to do this, they look for what a strong program needs.
A highly effective tool for creating, organizing and implementing a sound business ethics and compliance program should provide:
• Sample policies and procedures
• Step-by-step instructions for the development of a program
• A business ethics training program outline with classroom materials and a detailed session leader’s guide
• Business ethics and compliance officer position description
• Templates for employee involvement
• Sample code of conduct
Implementing Your Business Ethics Program
If the company board has committed to a strong business ethics and compliance program, the next step is to put the manual in the hands of corporate executives responsible for implementation. Used properly under advice of legal counsel, this efficient tool will yield a solid program that the board can understand, endorse, and monitor for effectiveness.
With step-by-step guidelines and accompanying examples of policies, procedures, training program, and employee survey, an effective tool provides an excellent road map for implementing an ethics and compliance initiative.
Maintaining a Culture of Ethics
Companies should make certain that their ethics compliance manual provides fully editable MS Word files with sample policies, surveys, forms and training session outlines. Also, businesses should ensure their ethics compliance system manual is fully endorsed by The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) as a tool to maintain a culture of integrity.
Professionalism Defined
Professional in any activity, sphere of influence or business has specific and unique qualities. What separates the true professional from the dilly-dallies who waste all of our time when we need something done right? For starters it is important to first define the professional.
A professional is someone who applying hard-won know-how in his activity. He does not operate off of luck or chance but instead utilizes this know-how with careful application. From a distance everything the professional does may seem easy. Yet on closer inspection you will see that the professional is taking care that every small action is precisely done and that it is just right.
This applies to anything from art to accounting, from law to graphic design. It simply applies to anything. What really separates the amateurs from the professional is the ability to work on anything as if it was the first time. Doing this one sees the necessity to do it right and has the self-determinism to ensure everything is done precisely. Not doing this will give you a decrease in product and service quality.
So next time you do anything, do it with an extra bit of care and a little extra push. There is no totally easy way to do anything. It has to be done with precision to create the desired result. Let’s make a pact between you (the reader), me and the rest of the professional world. Let us raise our standards so that we are always acting as professionals and really taking care that each little bit is just right. And I will see you at the top.
Article written by Brook Adyn
Manager at Sterling Web Design & Marketing
http://www.sterlingprm.com
Social Corporate Responsibility - A New Trend in Job Security
We all want to make a difference. To most, that means sharing some combination of their time, talent and financial resources. During the global economic crisis of 2008, a lot of people didn’t have the financial resources to continue to give to their families, friends, and the worthy foundations and causes they valued. So choices had to be made.
People still wanted to give - they just had to find creative ways to do it. In lieu of candles or coffee, Alison, a marketing director in Pittsburgh, opted to make a donation to a local pet shelter in honor of her sister. In Chicago, the adult members of the Bergh family drew names for their annual Christmas exchange. Only instead of physical gifts this year, they each made donations to non-profit organizations near and dear to the heart of the person’s name they drew. Gail, a development director in Yakima, Wash., adds money to the Salvation Army bell ring buckets and adds meal coupons for the Union Gospel Mission to her grocery bill when she checks out.
All of these people make a difference in their own way. But none of them stop there. They also look to spend their consumer dollars at companies dedicated to corporate social responsibility. Understanding this, today, multinational corporations — while still in business for profit — are adopting new corporate social responsibility [CSR] initiatives that are changing the way organizations of all sizes do business. CSR is not a widely-used term yet. Give it time.
The premise of CSR is that when an organization makes money in a community, they reinvest a portion of profits in that community and/or other global regions in need. That investment can come as a combination of money, employee volunteer time or products, such as pharmaceutical giant Merck which donates a drug to cure river-blindness, a dreadful disease which affects tens of millions of the world’s poorest people.
Even in a down economy — or perhaps enhanced by an economy in turmoil — consumers and businesses alike are prioritizing CSR. So much so, in fact, that CSR is emerging as a new trend in job security with companies adding entire departments dedicated to designing and implementing CSR initiatives.
Many Fortune 500 companies have committed their resources to CSR, in many cases budgeting for entire departments dedicated to setting and implementing their CSR strategy. It’s a job industry that will grow tremendously in the next decade as Internet retail gives consumers worldwide a greater choice of where to buy the products they need and want.
London-based Acre is a staffing organization dedicated exclusively to CSR/SRI [social responsibility investment] positions. At ethicalperformace.com visitors can search global listings of CSR and SRI professional services organizations, as well as learn more about events and training associated with this emerging trend.
Just because the media isn’t talking about this every day doesn’t mean it’s not already on the minds of world business leaders. A handful of public companies already entrenched in CSR/SRI initiatives include: Wal-Mart, Target, Levi Strauss, Gap, Timberland, General Electric, Whole Foods, Manpower, Inc., Dupont, Alcoa, IBM, and Hewlett Packard. Few CEOs are as globally generous as Microsoft founder, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda or his good friend Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren Buffett. Ted Turner and New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, also make that list. Generosity is “in” and the biggest names in the world are stepping up to make a difference and in many cases, to let their customers know about the difference they’re making through corresponding media campaigns.
Debra Yergen is a U.S.-based freelance writer with extensive experience in technology. She has held senior writing positions in the financial industry at firms including SunGard and Washington Mutual Bank. Debra is the author of Real Life 101, Creating Job Security: The 2009 All-In-One Workbook, published by The Graduate Group in West Hartford, Conn, and Creating Job Security Resource Guide. She holds a BA in Broadcast Journalism from Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow School of Communications.
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