Best practices for building ethical organizational climates

Ethics

The best practices for improving an organization's ethical climate are having ethics programs and officers; having realistic objectives; having ethical decision making processes; having codes of conduct; disciplining violators; having oversight from board of directors; conducting ethics audits and risk assessments; communicating effectively; engaging in ethics training; having corporate transparency; and installing whistle-blowing mechanisms. Of these, the most important is oversight from the Board of Directors. Ethical management begins with commitment from the top, and the Board will ensure that the CEO is fully committed. From there, having ethics programs and officers is important, both for its symbolism and for the practical work they will do with respect to many of these other best practices. The next few are all around the same with respect to level of priority - training, communication, audits and codes of conduct. These four all contribute at different stages of the ethical decision making process. Lastly, the reinforcement systems must be in place. They are not as important as doing it right the first time, but they are necessary nonetheless. This refers to whistle-blowing mechanisms and discipline of violators.

3) the two main ethical principles are consequences/results and duty. The most important of these in business is consequences. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that outcomes are what the public sees. Therefore, it is the potential outcomes that should be the guiding ethical principles. Ethics are mainly a problem in business when a company is perceived as unethical. Monsanto is a great example - few people have any ethical problems with this company, so their lack of ethics does not impact their business prospects.