How organizations manage ethical behavior and create organizational culture

Human Resources

Ethical Behavior and Organizational Culture

With all the current headlines about company misbehaviors and business ethics infringements has come a considerable, and long past due, increase in the consideration of ethics among businesses. As a consequence of the recent bad press about lawsuits against companies' behaving poorly, there has been a quick, almost frenzied scramble among many large corporations to set themselves apart from the offenders in the business world. Companies have rapidly developed ethics codes, put into practice ethics compliance monitoring programs, or have had advanced corporate officers noticeably touting their company's new and improved ethics focal point in the hope of recapturing consumer confidence in a devastated economy. And with good reason consumers are more and more wary of all business interactions, to the disadvantage of all, even the most upstanding of company. While businesses are fighting for continued existence in bad conditions, they need to be looking to the future and building solid basics upon which to base their future labors (Pike, n.d.).

This outlook is exactly the one that General Electric has in their company. An area of massive strength that GE has is the way the company identifies and builds leaders. A lot of the credit goes to GE's corporate learning programs. Education, it is a primary and very deeply rooted part of their corporate culture. GE uses an umbrella advance that they call GE Global Learning. It is broken up into three sections. The first is leadership. The second is skills, which includes things like finance skills and marketing skills. And the third section is business, which includes ethics training (How GE builds global leaders: A conversation with Chief Learning Officer Susan Peters, 2010).

GE takes a stair-step approach to learning. First, they have a collection of on-demand courses that are available through their computer system. They have an enterprise-wide license with several vendors in order to provide this material. They make sure that these courses cover a wide range of topics, including ethics. They use a lot of video and material with downloading potential. They persuade their leaders to use these courses on-demand or for lunch and learn programs (How GE builds global leaders: A conversation with Chief Learning Officer Susan Peters, 2010).

They then have thirteen courses having to do with leadership skills including ethics that they feel all employees should have. These courses are delivered at GE businesses around the world. This is done through a train the trainer notion. Once leadership is trained they then go back and train their staff. There is a component of their teaching that they recognize that will always be face-to-face. They have no plans to ever go to a place where they have only technology-based learning or e-learning training. They believe that in order to motivate, unite, and develop ideas people have to be physically together in the same place. They feel that a great amount of sharing takes place across functions and geographies when people are physically together (How GE builds global leaders: A conversation with Chief Learning Officer Susan Peters, 2010).

GE recognizes that since they are a global company that their commitment to ethics is vital to their success (How GE builds global leaders: A conversation with Chief Learning Officer Susan Peters, 2010). These days the business world has gone global, which has strengthened the ethics debate. Making payments in order to get business is ordinary practice in a lot of developing markets in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, and some companies feel indebted to play the game in order to compete and many of these companies have paid the ultimate price (George, 2008).

The only way to build a great global company is with a single global standard of business practice that is dynamically communicated and meticulously enforced. Applying situation ethics in developing countries is the quickest way to destroy a global organization. Operating ethically necessitates much more than a code of conduct. The CEO and top administration must connect with employees around the world to insist on transparency and compliance. Otherwise, they will never know what's going on. The company must have a tight system of monitoring and auditing local marketing practices, in order to make sure that things are done the right way (George, 2008).

General Electric's former general counsel, Ben Heineman, wrote an article in the Havard Business Review about high performance with high honor. He proposed that performance and ethics go hand in hand. Heineman argued convincingly that CEO's can't just distribute their policies and enforce them. Rather, they must get personally involved in making sure ethical behavior is practiced. They must engage employees in dynamic discussions of real-world issues and impart the way that things must be done (George, 2008).

The bottom line is that good ethics equates to good business. There is a direct connection between behaving ethically and creating long-term shareholder value. In addition, high integrity in outside business dealings goes hand in hand with creating greater transparency and increased honesty in internal relationships. This necessitates choosing leaders who are not only ethical themselves but also committed to ensuring their organizations operate ethically at all times (George, 2008).