![]() ![]() But organizational ethics means more than avoiding illegal practice and providing employees with a rule book will do little to address the problems underlying unlawful conduct. ![]() Designed by corporate counsel, the goal of these programs is to prevent, detect, and punish legal violations. Prompted by the prospect of leniency, many companies are rushing to implement compliance-based ethics programs. These sentencing guidelines recognize for the first time the organizational and managerial roots of unlawful conduct and base fines partly on the extent to which companies have taken steps to prevent that misconduct. In addition, they deprive their organizations of the benefits available under new federal guidelines for sentencing organizations convicted of wrongdoing. Executives who ignore ethics run the risk of personal and corporate liability in today’s increasingly tough legal environment. Managers must acknowledge their role in shaping organizational ethics and seize this opportunity to create a climate that can strengthen the relationships and reputations on which their companies’ success depends. 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. Ethics, then, is as much an organizational as a personal issue. 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. Rarely do the character flaws of a lone actor fully explain corporate misconduct. In fact, ethics has everything to do with management. Ethics, after all, has nothing to do with management. The thought that the company could bear any responsibility for an individual’s misdeeds never enters their minds. These executives are quick to describe any wrongdoing as an isolated incident, the work of a rogue employee. Many managers think of ethics as a question of personal scruples, a confidential matter between individuals and their consciences.
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