¶ … company having strong ethics across the entire organization, including ethical leadership, training & codes, and an ethical culture. The first and most important thing is that the company needs to have ethical leadership in place. People within organizations take their behavioral cues from the leaders of that organization, and the result of that is that when the leaders are the ethical leaders, the other members of the organization will follow. Thus, it is critical that the leaders set a strong ethical tone, to the point where they probably have to be the most ethical members of the organization. A good example of this would be when Martha Stewart was found guilty of insider trading, her company Omnimedia, faced a decline in its stock price. The concern was not that the company would have trouble succeeding without Stewart for a few months while she did time, but that if her ethical leadership was weak that this might have created a toxic ethical culture in the organization. In other words, Wall Street was worried that there might be bigger problems within the organization just waiting to be discovered.
The second element is that there needs to be an ethical code and training on ethics within the company. For a company to have a consistently high standard of ethical behavior, it is necessary that the ethics by which employees need should be clearly stated. This provides a baseline understanding throughout...
Furthermore, it provides some guidance in that employees can always refer back to the ethical code when they need a little bit of guidance to resolve an ethical dilemma. The code should not just be written down, but should be part of the company's training programs so that the ethical standards become part of the organization's DNA.
The third element is that the ethical culture must be established. The code and ethical leadership combine here. The company can enforce ethics by having a lot of ethical leaders throughout the organization -- all managers must provide a high standard of ethics. Furthermore, it is important that there are ethical systems in place. These systems would include things like having a hotline to help people who are facing ethical dilemmas or who can report improprieties. Such hotlines should be anonymous to ensure that there are no repercussions for whistleblowers. By putting all of these different elements together, a company can ensure that it has high ethical standards throughout the organization and throughout a number of different activities as well.
Section 2. A code of ethics should be created by specifically stating the company's ethical standards. Looking at the codes of ethics of other companies is a good place to get some ideas. Furthermore, there should be some philosophical consistency there…
