Giving values a voice, and how technology raises unchartered issues.

In this continuation of a dialogue about ethics in the workplace, a group of academic and business ethicists, convened by the ASAE Ethics Committee and led by David J. Noonan, who chairs the committee, consider some of the dilemmas we face in a complex work environment that seems constantly to test our ethical stamina. (For a complete list of the participants, see sidebar, "Fueling the Discussion.")

If we believe, for example, that ethics starts with the chief executive officer, are we saying the same standard should apply to everyone? How can we use a code of ethics to support ethical decisions in the face of political power plays? As we grapple with ethical behavior in ambiguous or conflicting situations, might there be help in the form of an ethics office or a code of ethics?

What kinds of ethical issues are being raised by the introduction of new technologies? Is it okay, for instance, to do online shopping during your lunch hour? What other dilemmas are occurring because of the blurring boundaries between work and play? In an environment that rewards instantaneous responses, where is there room for reflection on ethical issues?

These are just some of the issues you'll enjoy reading about in this second installment of "Talking About Ethics." (If you missed Part I, check out the March 1999 issue of ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT.)

I'd love to hear your reaction to the discussion and share your comments and observations with other readers. Please take a moment to get in touch; my e-mail address is [e-mail].

- Ann I. Mahoney, CAE, Editor in Chief

NOONAN: GIVE ME TWO ITEMS THAT ALWAYS EMERGE AS ETHICAL QUESTIONS. IS IT ALWAYS MONEY AND POWER?

Navran: Two frequent issues are a double standard and trust, two sides of the same issue.

Chonko: Organizations are loaded with norms that they publicize and counternorms that are actually going on in the organization.

Navran: Double standard can refer not just to the conflict between what we say and what we do, but also to organizations that have different standards, depending on power and influence. For instance, an organization doesn't allow employees to accept gifts and gratuities that may influence their decision making. However, the CEO can go on a $10,000 international boondoggle because he or she is above being influenced. That's the type of double standard I find even more insidious.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Petry: I would add conflict of interest, which comes up often in associations where you're bringing together people from different fields who operate by entirely different standards. In academia, for example, professors are encouraged to do consulting as a way of getting real-world experience; that same behavior is viewed as moonlighting or a clear conflict of interest in the corporate world.

Dubinsky: You've also got tough Internal Revenue Service regulations concerning the elimination of conflict of interest, prohibitions against private inurement, and the threat of intermediate sanctions. To risk losing your tax-exempt status because of an imprecise understanding of conflict of interest and its ramifications is a serious issue.

EMPOWERING THE ETHICS OFFICER

Noonan: How do you empower the ethics officer?(a)

Hoffman: One way is to give him or her a double reporting assignment: a direct report to the CEO and a direct report to an ethics committee of the board of directors.

In the situation where one board member nudges the CEO and says, "Hey, let's have our meeting in New Orleans this year because that's where my organization is," the CEO might say, "Joe, I have to go through the ethics office on this, which reports to the ethics committee." Also, the CEO might tell the ethics officer that he or she needs some advice on this issue. And the ethics officer might go to the board's audit committee and ask, "Is this something that seems appropriate to you?" A double reporting system would seem to relieve some of the pressure.

ETHICAL CODES FOR BOARDS

Petry: When the ethical dilemma is at the board level, as in the example you just raised, the problem isn't easily solved by the ethics officer structure. What we haven't yet mentioned is that the board itself should have a clearly stated ethics code. There may need to be an ethics committee on the board for board issues. I don't think you can take an ethical problem at the board level and send it down in the organization to the ethics officer for resolution.

So the first step has to be clear articulation of the ethical rules that govern board member behaviors with one another, the conflict-of-interest policies governing the board, and due-process procedures when an issue comes up. And that all has to be transparent from the get-go.

Chonko: When we talk about ethics officers, we run into the same problem we have with codes: The code is there to restrict them and the ethics officer is there to get them.

It's common to have a negative association with anything related to the enforcement, if you will, of behaviors. We tend to see the ethics officer as the person we go to when we have problems, as opposed to the person who really can prevent us from getting into trouble, and, at the same time, maybe elevate the organization to one that both provides good-quality products and is profitable.

THE VOICE OF THE STANDARDS

Navran: The ethics officer is not the authority in the organization; the standards are the authority. Rather than worry that we're going to drive an issue down to the ethics officer, I would like to see the standards elevated so that the same standards apply to everyone. If standards are explicit and if the way they are integrated into the decision-making process used by the organization is explicit, then this situation becomes self-correcting.

There are generally four levels of standards. The regulatory legal component is externally imposed on the organization. The policy and procedural component is self-imposed by the organization. The values, beliefs, and principles of the organization impose another standard. And, finally, there is the standard imposed by the values, beliefs, and principles of the decision makers.

If the decision to go to a board member's personally selected meeting site conflicts with any of those four standards, and they are the universal standards that everybody applies to all decisions of the organization, the standards provide all the authority you need to say, "This one doesn't pass the test. It's inconsistent with our policies and our values."

Hoffman: I don't disagree. But the standards don't necessarily walk into the CEO's office, or into the boardroom, or into committee meetings. Somebody has to be the voice, if you will, of those standards; has to carry them into the boardroom and into other strategic meetings. That really is part of what an ethics office is all about. My concern is that ethics officers do not get into a lot of those meetings and that some of those standards do not have a voice because other objectives of the corporation drown them out.

Navran: The safety mechanism that I've seen work in organizations is where every decision, not just those that are clearly troublesome, is tested against a standard. The voice of the ethics office is always there because it is a routine part of how the organization makes decisions. This prevents the "ethics officer as the lone voice in the wilderness" scenario.

I worked in a dangerous industry where people doing heavy engineering and heavy construction get injured on the job; people die on the job. The safety of every decision was an integral part of the process, and at any point any employee could stop any job based on a safety concern, even if it was not borne out by facts later on. That's the level at which ethics initiatives need to be integrated into organizations.

THE LONELIEST JOB

Dubinsky: I've been an ethics officer. It is truly the loneliest job in America. You can't even talk about the issues that come up because part of your social contract is: We'll solve it here without publicity. The reality is, two or three times a year you have an audience with the boss, the CEO, for 15 minutes and, for goodness sake, make every one of those minutes count, and don't bring a problem that doesn't have a solution attached.

So I see two things happening. One is that the ethics function gets marginalized. The other is what I call double and triple "hatting." I am the associate general counsel for employment law; I am the ethics officer; and I'm also an assistant corporate secretary. I am the director of human resources; I am the compliance officer; and I'm also the affirmative action officer.

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP FROM THE TOP

Murphy: There would cease to be a problem in your scenario if the CEO stood up and said, "That's not the way we do it here." The ethics initiative will only work if the people at the top, the CEO and the executive management team, are really committed. It's so important that ethical leadership start with the CEO. Are the superstar business leaders who are getting superstar salaries, are they ethical superstars? I'm not sure, and I think that's really what we need to demand of them. Then the fact is that a leader is not just doing the bidding of others.

Hackett: In our example of the CEO whose board member wants to move the meeting site to his city of choice, the CEO probably would have liked to have said no, but the political reality is that the board member is going to do his performance review, influence his salary, and can make his life miserable or unbearable for a given period of time. How do you deal with that political reality?

Hoffman: Don't underestimate the power of a code of ethics for staff. If an employee is asked by his or her supervisor to do something that is not in keeping with the code of ethics, the employee has a lot of power by simply saying, "Joe, I don't want to be disrespectful of what you are asking me to do as my supervisor, but I really think that doesn't fit with what's in the code of ethics. I would put my job in jeopardy for doing that." Now, Joe, the supervisor, is going to have a hard time righting that if he says, "I don't care what it says in the code of ethics; do it anyway." Then Jim can say, "Oh, I don't think you mean that, Joe." This is just how codes operate.

It seems to me the CEO can say the same thing if the organization has a code of ethics that would clearly say this behavior or action is really out of keeping with the code. I say this with the belief that it is still important to have the structure of an ethics office to which a CEO can also turn, to have actions reviewed by an ethics officer.

Petry: There have to be board standards in place. Clarity, transparency (e.g., applying the standard, "Would you want to see your actions in a news headline?"), and peer review could be very helpful in this kind of scenario.

Navran: Are we underestimating the moral courage of the leadership? You know, at some point, you just say no.

Hoffman: Well, you do, but everybody in an organization needs support, even the CEO at times. Sometimes you do have power plays, people do want to test their power, and people who are being whiplashed by that need to have some protection. A code of ethics can provide that, and so can an ethics office.

MEASURING SUCCESS

Noonan: We never hear about the person who makes a $3 million decision not to do something because it goes against the organization's values. We have no hall of honor for the organization that makes the right decision. We have no way of giving visibility to the people who make those $3 million decisions.

Navran: Their story often becomes part of the internal mythology of the organization. It becomes one of the stories that people talk about.

Petry: There is a lot at stake here. Ethics officers are constantly being asked to justify their existence. How do you measure the success of these programs? They can't point to things that didn't happen. In the wake of the 1991 Federal Sentencing Guidelines (Chapter 8), a lot of ethics programs were set up. Now people are saying, we've integrated ethics into the organization; it can run by itself. We don't need an ethics officer. We can marginalize it.

It's curious that I never hear the argument for marginalizing chief financial officers. Sure, financial accountability is everyone's responsibility in the organization, but that doesn't mean it takes care of itself. Ethics is everybody's responsibility, too. But you still need somebody in the organization at a senior position whose presence is felt.

Chonko: I think you can point to things that didn't happen: We had no harassment suits this year. We had no discrimination suits this year. We had no customer complaints this year.

ETHICAL USE OF ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

Noonan: In what ways is the new electronic era introducing new tests of ethical principles?

Navran: I've observed in the corporate world about a three-year lag from the time employees began having access to the Internet and the time corporations developed a coherent policy guiding employee behavior on the Internet. Employees find themselves looking to fundamental principles and values of the organization in the absence of policy.

So an employee comes to me and asks, "Can I use my business computer to access the Internet on my lunch hour to gather information about a vacation my husband and I are planning?" As the supervisor I think, there's no cost to the company involved here. There is no risk or exposure to the company. She's doing it on her own time. She's not blocking someone else from the computer. I don't see any reason why not.

If that same employee is accessing adult sites, I may say that's inappropriate and not acceptable, but that's coming purely out of a sense of values about what's right and wrong and what does or does not constitute propriety in the business environment. This lag between the need for direction, policy, and guidance and the creation of new policy, direction, and guidance is a change issue.

Dubinsky: We just have to apply what we know about appropriate use of other resources to our use of computer technology and make some analogies, figure out what our comfort level is, understand what can be regulated and what can't, establish a process, establish the policy, communicate it, enforce it, and so on.

ONLINE PRIVACY ISSUES

Murphy: Another issue has to do with privacy online. For example, what kinds of information are organizations gathering about their customers or people who visit their Web site? Associations could help to identify who among their members have electronic policies they are willing to share. Companies are just now grappling with this, and I think it's a huge ethical issue.

Petry: In the survey we conducted last year, one company said that it found a number of its employees were addicted to the Internet, and that this is really becoming a problem. (See sidebar, "The Ethical Impact of New Technologies on Workers.") When we asked if they thought they were addicted to the Internet, 2 percent said yes they were. When we asked if they knew someone in their workplace who was addicted, 50 percent said they did. That's a problem.

Noonan: I'm getting the impression that the Internet is the street corner. In my own organization, I tell people if they go on the Internet, they're going out on the street corner, and whenever they shop from the street corner, anyone that goes by can have access.

Dubinsky: Akin to the Street corner analogy is e-mail. I can have great pen pal correspondence around the globe at work and spend a lot of time checking my e-mail, because though the company says we will monitor your e-mail usage for business purposes only, I write my aunt, my sister, my next door neighbor. What employees don't always understand is that any message sent from the organization's e-mail server has the force and credit of the organization behind whatever the employee is saying.

A nationally recognized financial institution based in Northern Virginia is involved in race discrimination litigation in which part of the documentary evidence brought by the plaintiff are racially obnoxious jokes that were transmitted on the company's e-mail system.

Hackett: I'm familiar with situations where you tell the staff they are not to send personal e-mails, but they have little control over what comes in. If someone else sees an incoming message or fax and is offended, there could be harassment suits.

Noonan: What other ethical dilemmas do new technologies present?

Chonko: A whole host of consumer-related issues. One is credit-card fraud. And there are all sorts of information overload problems. I don't know how a consumer can sift through all the information available online and find good information, and determine that the supplier of that information is reputable.

ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION Of CODES

Navran: Information overload is an issue. I work with a client that surveyed its employees and found that only 8 percent are familiar with the organization's ethics policies and value statements, both of which had been distributed via e-mail. When we asked employees why they didn't know about the policies, their answer was, "I get 300 e-mails a day. I don't read global e-mails, that is, e-mails not addressed to me personally. I trash those." So using e-mail to disseminate policy may be fast and easy, but it's also very ineffective.

Petry: We have links on our site to our members' ethics Web pages. A number of companies are also creating Intranets within their organizations to help with ethics and compliance training.

BLURRING OF BOUNDARIES

Petry: Another issue that turned up in our survey is the blurring of the distinction between work and private life. With such technologies as laptop computers and pagers, the distinction between the office and the rest of the world vanishes. A lot of problems that have been around in a nontechnical way are now turning up in our high-tech environment, from use of company assets to invasion of privacy, sabotaging systems, and harassment. Another issue is blaming a mistake that you make on a technological glitch.

Hoffman: It's amazing what you can find out about people just by going to the Web. And it raises new ethical questions about how you use this information. Just because the information is on the Web doesn't mean it's legitimate or that it's ethically appropriate to have it.

I remember an acquaintance showing me some unbelievable software. He said, "Tell me the name of a friend of yours." With just the name and address, he called up my friend's house visually on the screen. It showed the property boundaries and those of the neighbors. It showed access and egress points in the house. It was really kind of frightening. The question now becomes this: What information that we get off the Internet should we actually be using?

Petry: One can respond to the issue you raise with two very different approaches. One is to, in some way, restrict the information that is being placed on the Internet, or restrict access to information. The other approach is to have no restriction but place responsibility with the user to use that information ethically.

NEW GUIDELINES NEEDED

Hoffman: Yes, just because information is on the Web doesn't mean that you should be able to use it any way you want. Organizations are going to need to develop a whole new set of guidelines regarding the ethical use of information that comes off the Internet. It's a tremendous time-saver for employees to communicate with their kids using e-mail, perhaps to do some shopping on the Internet rather than actually have to leave work to shop. This can help employees manage busy lives - a tremendous advantage. You wouldn't want to sacrifice that through misapplied or misinformed restrictions.

Noonan: Suppose every source on the Internet had to be identified.

Grove: One of our biggest dilemmas concerned listservers, a tool many associations use to help members share information and network with each other. Early on, one school of thought said we needed to monitor activity on the listserver. And our attorneys and legal counsel kept saying, "You can call it whatever you want, but what you're talking about is censure." We decided not to monitor, and we've found that our listserver subscribers do their own policing. If somebody is out of line, they fix it. The staff doesn't have to step in and fix it.

Murphy: I think most companies have chosen not to police. Also, it gets back to the issue of the blurring distinction between work and free time. And I think this all plays into a more complex situation. We have old decision-making rules, but sometimes they're not going to apply. Companies have opportunities to snoop, if you will, on their employees. And most are choosing not to do it unless they have grounds, for instance, if somebody's productivity drops off or if there are allegations of sexual harassment or other kinds of inappropriate behaviors. In these instances, I think the electronic medium actually helps in that it makes it easier to find the "paper trail."

Navran: Blurring of boundaries can have another meaning when talking about global business. The expectation in global corporations is that everybody is accessible 24 hours a day. The global nature of telecommunications is changing the way business is getting done. Transmission of multicultural variances and values and ethics is becoming something we have to deal with. When you talk to people in multinational corporations about their code of conduct, a fundamental question is, do I have one code of conduct in all the appropriate languages, or do I have 57 codes of conduct? And because of the ease of communication, technology is making those questions much more pressing.

Petry: But also making the solutions in many cases that much easier. And yes, there's an intrusion into our private lives, but it also helps us to balance work and family more effectively. You're accessible by e-mail, which means you can be home when your son has chicken pox. So, again, there are benefits as well.

THE DANGERS OF SPEED

I see another trend that is troubling. In a technological environment of incredible speed, we want instantaneous answers, and we have no patience. Someone faxes you a query and then calls 10 minutes later asking, "Where's my answer?" But reflection on moral issues - on ethical dilemmas - is not a fast process.

As business starts to speed up, we assume that all ethical decision making is instantaneous, intuitive; it's the one-minute-manager approach, which is fundamentally, I think, the wrong approach. If you're saying a decision has to be very fast, you diminish the capacity to take the time to reflect, examine alternatives, consider options, look at the ramifications, and come up with a morally appropriate response. That's the danger.

Noonan: Then it's incumbent upon organizations to spend time developing an ethical base, a values base for the organization, so that when caught in a dilemma with a time crunch, a foundation will already exist.

Dubinsky: Give employees permission to buy time. And not every decision can be reflected on forever, so you do have to balance that out. But you can say it's okay to step back, there's a process for reflection. There's a decision-making model that we want you to think through. There are people to talk to. Call your ethics officer.

We have to be able to say to employees: Recognize and appreciate the dilemmas, but resolution is not instantaneous even though Internet technology presumes instantaneous answers.

a The ethics officer is the person designated to oversee the design and implementation of an organization's internal ethics and compliance programs. He or she is also responsible for helping employees answer difficult questions and, when wrongdoing occurs, for investigating and ensuring that an appropriate response is made.

FUELING THE Discussion

LAWRENCE B. CHONKO

Holloway Professor of Marketing, Baylor University, Waco, Texas 

JOAN ELISE DUBINSKY

President, The Rosentreter Group, Kensington, Maryland 

W. MICHAEL HOFFMAN

Executive Director, Center for Business Ethics, Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts 

PATRICK E. MURPHY

Professor of Marketing, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 

FRANK J. NAVRAN

Director of Advisory Services, Ethics Resource Center, Washington, D.C.

ED PETRY

Executive Director, Ethics Officer Association, Belmont, Massachusetts 

DAVID J. NOONAN

ASAE Ethics Committee Chair and Deputy Executive Vice President, American Academy of Ophthalmology, San Francisco 

KAREN HACKETT, CAE

ASAE Ethics Committee Vice Chair and Executive Vice President, American College of Healthcare Executives, Chicago

MICHAEL S. OLSON, CAE

President and CEO, American Society of Association Executives, Washington, D.C.

JON GROVE, CAE

Then-Executive Vice President, American Society of Association Executives, Washington, D.C.

RELATED ARTICLE: THE ETHICAL IMPACT OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES ON Workers

Does the presence of new technologies in the workplace increase the risk of unethical and illegal business practices? A 1998 nationwide survey by the Ethics Officer Association, Belmont, Massachusetts, and the American Society of Chartered Life Underwriters & Chartered Financial Consultants, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, explored that question. The survey was mailed to a cross section of American workers, and chief among the findings were these points:

* Nearly half (45 percent) of the respondents reported that they had engaged in one or more of 12 unethical actions during the past year. (See chart.)

* Though not a majority, one in six employees agreed with the statement that traditional standards of right and wrong are no longer relevant, and one third either agree or are ambivalent. This sentiment increases with age. Only 7 percent of those ages 3034 agree, but more than 21 percent of the respondents older than 55 say that traditional standards of right and wrong are no longer relevant.

* When asked if they feel that they are addicted to the Internet, 2 percent said yes. The response rate did not vary by gender or age. When asked if others they work with are addicted to the Internet, 50 percent said yes. Sixty-five percent of those who work in large organizations (more than 25,000 employees) say others they work with are addicted.

ACTIONS RELATED TO TECHNOLOGY CONSIDERED UNETHICAL

96% Sabotage systems/data of current co-worker or employer

96% Sabotage systems/data of former employer

93% Access private computer files without permission

92% Listen to a private cellular phone conversation

87% Visit pornographic Web sites using office equipment

70% Use new technologies to unnecessarily intrude on coworkers' privacy (such as paging during dinner)

67% Create a potentially dangerous Situation by using new technology while driving

66% Use office equipment to network/search for another job

65% Copy the company's software for home use

61% Wrongly blame an error on a technological glitch

59% Make multiple copies of software for office use

54% Use office equipment to shop on the Internet for personal reasons

Source: Technology & Ethics in the Workplace: The Ethical Impact of New Technologies on Workers, sponsored by the American Society of Chartered Life Underwriters & Chartered Financial Consultants, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and the Ethics Officer Association, Belmont, Massachusetts, copyright 1998. Reprinted by permission.

RELATED ARTICLE: IN SEARCH OF ETHICS ON THE Internet

Whether in print or online, there's plenty of material available for your pursuit of learning more about business ethics. What's presented here is a small slice of a large pie. If you have a favorite ethics resource not mentioned here, please contact us ([e-mail]) so that we can share that information with our readers.

BUSINESS ETHICS GENERALLY

csep.lit.edu/codes/codes.html

Illinois Institute of Technology Codes of Ethics Online; codes by category

www.acusd.edu/index.html

Ethics Updates; provides updates on current popular and professional literature that relates to ethics

www.bbb.org

Better Business Bureau; offers marketplace ethics and resource library

www.bentley.edu/resource/cbe

Center for Business Ethics; promotes ethical business conduct in contemporary society; includes network of practitioners and scholars, multimedia library, educational programming, and consulting

www.businessethics.org

Council for Ethics in Economics; interactive business ethics case studies; conversations on ethics

www.depaul.edu/ethics

DePaul University Institute for Business and Professional Ethics; includes codes of conduct, ethics associations and organizations, consultants, and ethics resources on the Internet

www.dii.org

Defense Industry Initiative; a consortium of defense industry contractors; offers ethics training resources and links to other ethics sites by discipline or industry

www.ethics.org

Ethics Resource Center; fosters ethical practices in individuals and organizations; offers character education, reports of two surveys on ethics, and speakers bureau

ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/~appe/home.html

Association for Practical and Professional Ethics; includes association activities, publications, and electronic networking

www.gaiafriends.com/ethics/

Ethics Information Center; provides recommended reading list and links

www.globalethics.org

Institute for Global Ethics; offers subscription on ethics news and training and consulting

www.orca,bc.ca/ethics/home.html

International Ethical Business Registry; for companies, professionals, and societies that define and display in the workplace their ethical codes

www.sau.edu/cwis/internet/wild/Majors/Business/BusEthic/beindex.htm

St. Ambrose University Business Ethics and Social Responsibility Links; features business ethics sites, association codes, and worksheet for ethical decision making

www.taknosys.com/ethics/index.htm

Ethics Center; clearinghouse, case analyses, and problem-solving methods

ETHICS SITES BY SPECIAL INTEREST AREA

Association Management Company

www.asaenet.org/sections/AMC/mgmttools1.html

International Association of Association Management Companies and ASAE Best Professional Practices for AMCs

www.amcf.org/codeofethics.html

Association of Management Consulting Firms 

Communication

www.iabc.com/members/Joining/code.htm

International Association of Business Communicators 

www.prsa.org/profstand.html

Public Relations Society of America Code of Professional Standards

spj.org/ethics/code.htm

Society of Professional Journalists 

Education

www.ascd.org/today/belief.html

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Belief Statements

www.astd.org/virtual_community/governance/

American Society for Training & Development Code of Ethics

Executive Management

www.mapnp.org/library/ethics/ethxgde.htm

A Complete Guide to Ethics Management

www.eoa.org

Ethics Officer Association

Finance and Administration

www.aicpa.org/about/code/index.htm

AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) Code of Professional Conduct

www.shrm.org/ethics/

Society for Human Resource Management Code of Ethics

Fund-raising

weber.u.washington.edu/~dlamb/apra/ethics.htm

Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement Statement of Ethics

www.case.org/mission.htm

Council for Advancement and Support of Education Statement of Ethics

www.ncib.org/standard.html

National Charities Information Bureau Standards in Philanthropy

www.ncpg.org/stds.html

National Committee on Planned Giving Model Standards for the Charitable Gift Planner

www.nsfre.org/code.html

National Society of Fundraising Executives Code of Ethical Principles and Standards of Professional Practice

fdncenter.org/onlib/ethics.html

Foundation Center Bibliography on Fundraising Ethics

Government Relations

www.asaenet.org/PublicPolicy/Advocacy4.asp

ASAE's Guidelines for Association Lobbyists

International

www.iami.org/ita/info3.html

International Trade Association Code of Ethics

Legal

www.legalethics.com/states.htm

Internet Legal Services Ethics Sites

www2.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/foliocgi.exe/RPC-OVERVIEW?

Legal Information Institute, Cornell University, Rules of Lawyer Conduct

www.acca.com/vl/professionalism/mackenzie.html

American Corporate Counsel Association

Marketing

www.utampa.edu/acad/cob/cfe/textsite/ama.html

American Marketing Association Codes of Ethics for Internet Marketing 

www.cdma.org/new/ethics_2.html

Canadian Marketing Association Code of Ethics & Standards of Practice

www.the-dma.org/busasst6/busasst-ethics6a1.shtml

Direct Marketing Association Ethical Guidelines for Direct Marketers

www.mra-net.org/MEMBERSHIP/Codestand.html

Market Research Association Code of Data Collection Standards

Meetings and Expositions

www.iaem.org/about/code_ethics.htm

International Association for Exposition Management Code of Ethics

www.mpiweb.org/prin.htm

Meeting Professionals International Principles of Professionalism

Technology

www.acm.org/constitution/code.html

Association for Computing Machinery Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct

csep.iit.edu/codes/coe/Data%20Processing%20Management%20Assoc%2081.html

Data Processing Management Association Code of Ethics

www.nspe.org/eh-home.htm

National Society of Professional Engineers Code of Ethics

RELATED ARTICLE: TEN BOOK SUGGESTIONS FOR YOUR Ethics Resource Collection

The time to invest in ethics resources is before the association is faced with an ethics issues. To start, I assume you know about Aristotle and other great philosophers who have written about ethics, as well as the ethical precepts that are part of religions. Here, then, are 10 current references that I think you'll find helpful.

- Wilford A. Butler, CAE, President and CEO, Butler Consulting, Indianapolis, Indiana 

* Defining Moments, When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right, by Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr. (1997, Harvard Business School Press)

Badaracco is John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at the Harvard Business School.

* Managing People Is Like Herding Cats: Warren Bennis on Leadership, by Warren Bennis (1997, Executive Excellence Publishing)

Drawing from his leadership studies with top leaders, Bennis examines the crises of leadership and writes about the need for an ethical dimension in leadership and life.

* The Ethical Imperative, Why Moral Leadership Is Good Business, by John Dalla Costa (1998, Perseus)

This thoughtful presentation makes the common-sense case for why ethics makes good business sense.

* Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, by Francis Fukuyama (1995, Free Press)

How is success related to ethics? Are they separate or intertwined? A must for your shelf.

* Evaluation With Power, by Sandra Trice Gray (1997, Independent Sector, Jossey-Bass Publishers)

Almost without fail, evaluations raise ethical questions, and this clearly written gem will help you frame your thinking about how to proceed.

* Association Law Handbook, Third Edition, by Jerald A. Jacobs (1996, ASAE)

Chapter 52 is a concise presentation of business and professional codes and self-regulation issues.

This book (product AMR216465) is available at $110 for members and $135 for nonmembers, plus shipping, through the ASAE Member Service Center. Phone: [phone]; fax: [phone]; or e-mail: [e-mail].

* How Good People Make Tough Choices, by Rushworth M. Kidder (1996, Simon and Shuster)

This is a book that I frequently recommend executives read and then give to their chief elected leaders. It is not too long, but it is powerful.

* Ethics in Nonprofit Management, A Collection of Cases, edited by Kenneth G. Koziol (1998, Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management, University of San Francisco)

You can use this timely three-ring notebook collection of 40 cases to identify possible areas of ethical issues in the nonprofit spectrum in the organization you serve.

* Eighty Exemplary Ethics Statements, by Patrick E. Murphy (1997, University of Notre Dame Press)

When you need some examples of ethics statements, this reference is invaluable.

* The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value, by Frederick F. Reichheld (1996, Harvard Business School Press)

When loyalty becomes the driver of nonprofits, they take a longer view and that tends to promote ethical thinking and decisions.