For a company or a business, several things need to take place to ensure a higher level of ethical standard that lasts in the long run.

Reply1: For a company or a business, several things need to take place to ensure a higher level of ethical standard that lasts in the long run. I believe that a company should first have its policies in place – which sets a standard and expectations for all employees and shareholders.

Next, the behavior of the upper management tends to set a tone for how other employees are going to behave – and so having positive managerial leadership is important. For example, in my company when we give feedback to our managers about benefits for example, it is good to see that in bigger meetings, this feedback was taken into consideration when it gets discussed. In this way, the values of honesty, communication, and loyalty are reassured to employees. When a new employee is hired, they must also go through training so that they are aware of the ethical standard required from them. When I was training for my job, we had a lot of sections covering company culture, the importance of being ethical – not only within our company but also to our clients. So the internal and external behavior expectations were very clearly layed out.

Finally, I think a company needs to have reporting – or some way of keeping in check that the ethical standards are being followed and respected. Sometimes companies opt in to reward ethical behavior as well as a strategy to ensure that it is maintained.

Reply 2: There have been scandals after scandals in the corporate world – few recent ones to list Archigo Capital leverage, Wirecard’s collapse, Nikola misleading investors, Volkswagen diesel scandal, and the list goes on. Hopefully, there are not many more hidden in balance sheets. Most of these companies have systems in place to prevent malfeasance at all levels. And yet these are happening often. It has been shown by these occurrences that well-informed people are also ethically malleable than the common perception. And that happens when the decision-making misses the context of the effects of the decision.

The organization should have a simple statement for the core mission and conduct activities so that employees are always reminded of it. Trainings should remind the employees that their seemingly small decision to trespass a rule can potentially cause distress to many others. Ethical behaviours should be rewarded, recognized and celebrated.

Organizational design at all levels should be made aware to not fall into the “Reach goal at any cost” mindset. Managers and employees should be trained to breakdown a job and ensure sufficient resources to get the job done without having to break ethical grounds.

Reference:

Epley, N., & Kumar, A. (2019). How to design an ethical organization? Harvard Business Review, 144-150.