Corporate culture and ethical behavior. (Letters)."Ensuring Ethical Effectiveness" (JofA, Feb.03, page 28) presented an excellent summary of the steps companies need to take in upgrading their ethics ethics, in philosophy, the study and evaluation of human conduct in the light of moral principles. Moral principles may be viewed either as the standard of conduct that individuals have constructed for themselves or as the body of obligations and duties that a codes. However, it did not explicitly mention the role of corporate culture as a strong influence on individual behavior. Every company I have consulted with has both an espoused culture and a real culture that people live by every day. Real culture is closely linked to the behaviors people are actually rewarded and punished pun·ish v. pun·ished, pun·ish·ing, pun·ish·es v.tr. 1. To subject to a penalty for an offense, sin, or fault. 2. To inflict a penalty for (an offense). 3. for, primarily through promotion, compensation and bonus mechanisms. Real corporate culture for adults is similar to peer pressure for teens, making it difficult to behave outside the group norm. Companies need to be aware of any differences between espoused and real cultures, particularly with regard to ethical behavior. For example, if sales personnel who aggressively book revenue are consistently rewarded while those who take a more conservative approach are left behind, one may expect to find problems in the company's revenue classifications and related financial figures. On the other hand, a company such as Texas Instruments See TI. (company) Texas Instruments - (TI) A US electronics company. A TI engineer, Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit in 1958. Three TI employees left the company in 1982 to start Compaq. , cited in the article for its ethics leadership, may well have used the same pressure of real corporate culture to act as a consistent "invisible hand Invisible Hand A term coined by economist Adam Smith in his 1776 book "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations". In his book he states: "Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. " that enforces appropriate behavior. The assessment of real culture therefore is an important ingredient in any examination of a company's adherence adherence /ad·her·ence/ (ad-her´ens) the act or condition of sticking to something. immune adherence to its espoused code of ethics Code of Ethics can refer to:
George P. Jones, CPA President ChangeMakers Inc. Houston |
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