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Talent Management Perspectives

Published March 2010

Tangible Ways to Reinforce Ethics in Your Organization

  Deanna Hartley

Picture, if you will, a salesperson who faces the ethical dilemma of either risking losing his commission — by turning down a guaranteed sale because his company lacks the resources to deliver quality products or service on time — or closing the sale by making empty promises to the customer.

Companies don't choose the former option very often because they're afraid they'll lose sales and are only considering the short term, explained Alice Darnell Lattal, Ph.D., CEO and president of Aubrey Daniels International and co-author of A Good Day's Work.

"[In] the 2000s, we [are] seeing the fruits of rampant self-interest and corporations looking to the short-term gain versus the longer term," she said.

There's a sense of urgency to reinstate or reinforce ethics in corporate America today, Lattal said.

"The urgency gets to everything you read in the paper — starting with the Enron collapse all the way to Bernie Madoff. Then there are the banks forgetting about the basis by which standards were set, getting to short-term gain [and] a lot of promotion of, 'This is a country where you can have all that you want without paying; just go ahead and live now; buy your house, buy your condo,'" she said. "[Many people] got caught up in that and find that suddenly [while] intending to spend that money wisely, they're now without resources.

"Our position in the world is being affected; the sense of security and American money management seems to be dissipating; the dollar is underwritten — all of these things in many ways are part of the tidal wave of collapse of confidence [that is] unfortunately related to acts that are later determined to be unethical."

It's time for corporate America to build an ethical infrastructure that defines, measures and reinforces ethical behavior, Lattal said.

"Infrastructure [refers to] the context in which business occurs, the conditions that surround the individual employee at whatever level — the corporate executive, the stockholder investment group or the board of directors all the way to the employee at the front line — every one of these individuals needs to be encased in strategies, processes, structures and practices that put ethics not as a priority, but a core," she said.

If ethics is treated as a priority, it becomes an expendable value because priorities continually shift, Lattal explained.

"[Instead,] we want the infrastructure to be built — concretely what that means is in your performance reviews, ethics is on the table; it's something that's measured; it becomes part of individual scorecards of performance," she said. "[Companies] can design evaluation criteria by which to judge, 'Is this a good sale for the long run? Will this contribute to the common good? Does this respect individuals and their rights? Will this [ensure] the company meets standards?'"

Then, during periodic evaluations, managers and their subordinates can make it part of the agenda to discuss any ethical dilemmas they may have encountered, how they addressed them and what they learned from them.

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