Ethics is an important part of every organization. But in today’s global environment, its not enough to simply ask your employees to act ethically. Ethics are colored by a person’s culture. So before you roll out your company’s ethics program, you must first define what is meant by the word “ethics”.
Compliance is the process of ensuring that your company and employees follow the laws, regulations, standards and ethical practices that apply to your organization.
Laws are regulations are pretty clear – they state what can and cannot be done.
Standards are also pretty simple to understand – each company has their own standards regarding the behavior of their employees.
Where things get more complicated is the question of ethics. This is because ethics are not black and white. Not everybody has the same definition of the word “ethics”.
To better understand this idea, we must first define what is meant by culture. Culture is an environment created by humans that explains a particular society or aspects of a society. In other words, the beliefs, customs, art, etc of a society, group or place. Some examples of this would be:
– the history shared by a particular country
– the beliefs shared by a particular religion
Ethics, on the other hand, are the moral principles that guide the behavior of a person or group. They are the behavioral rules based on ideas of what is morally right and wrong.
So where I come from, influences my definition of ethics.
It should also be noted that legal does not necessarily mean ethical. Some examples of legal, but questionably ethical behavior would include:
– The death penalty
– Product testing on animals
– Abortion
So why is it important to understand the influence that culture has on ethics? Because personal ethics may vary depending upon the individual, but corporate ethics should not vary. So the first item that should be explained when teaching corporate ethics should be the company’s definition of the word “ethics”.