Introduction
Organizational ethics are the policies, procedures and culture that lead the employees to do the right things when they face difficulties and often controversial issues. Ethics and how any organization practices ethics is a very important issue, which need to be constantly checked it to redesign, communicate and evaluate, to maintain it update and working.
Business ethics can differ from industry to industry, because the nature of a business's operations has a major influence on the ethical issues with which it must contend, but in all cases ethics is a relevant topic in the operation of the business and the way people perceive the business, and for that reason, always is important to develop an ethical culture and stablish it as a way of acting and the core values of the company.
Identify the problems presented by this case.
In this case, is evident the lack of information in which the consultant can create the ethical system for the company. Always it is necessary to understand how the company is dealing its difficulties and ethical controversies, and the way the leaders and the rest of employees understand ethics in the company.
It is important to know the ethical dilemmas employees have faced through the years the company have been working, because based on that the consultant can diagnose how well or badly is the ethical issue in the company and then start to work in the critical points and focus on what they really need to improve.
Why do you think the corporate counsel has responded in this way? What will be your response to him, if any?
I can see several variables that reflect that there are serious problems at the ethical level in the company. One of them is that if I can't access the information it is because they hide some ethical dilemmas that were not handled in the best way, but at the same time, their attitude of refusal to deliver information is understood as a total disinterest in recognizing mistakes , learn from them and use them as a tool to improve and base a new ethics system that compromises all parts of the company.
My response will be I really need access to the real information and to the corporate counsel to understand what it is going on in the company, the critical points to work on it, and to really know what the company and its leaders want to base its ethic system on. I need the information to develop a personalized ethic system, based on what they need, because the ethic system is more than a code of conduct and a mission statement that reflects a perfect theory of what must be; it should reflect the company values and the senior leaders and employees must feel identify with it.
According to Paine (1994) "More typically, unethical business practice involves the tacit, if not explicit, cooperation of others and reflects the values, attitudes, beliefs, language, and behavioral patterns that define an organization’s operating culture. Ethics, then, is as much an organizational as a personal issue. Managers who fail to provide proper leadership and to institute systems that facilitate ethical conduct share responsibility with those who conceive, execute, and knowingly benefit from corporate misdeeds (p.2)
As a consultant, what are your ethical obligations, if any?
My ethical obligation in the creation of a code of conduct and a mission statement, are trying to help the company in the development of an ethical system, and to transmit all the information between its employees to interiorize the information and create awareness about to respond right to the ethical dilemmas, not only for the norms and regulations about some issues inside the company, but because we need to try to act according to the corporate and individual values.
Another important obligation as a consultant is the discretion and confidentiality about the information found in the company, for that reason it is important to try to access to the information the company is trying to ban, and create a dialogue between the senior managers to understand which have been their problems and what kind of dilemmas they have dialed, and how they have solved it, not to judge the way they manage the