The discipline of applied business ethics is there to help us interpret various situations and relationships from the prism of ethical values, to help us resolve ethical dilemmas and understand what is at stake and which direction is best from the broader human and societal perspective.
Rules and regulations are there to help an organization to comply with the set of rules. These are important for enabling humans to basically co-exist and to function within certain organization or society, to create level-playing field, to make our lives and work orderly, more predictable, and safer. This I believe is this most important purpose of complying with rules. A problem arises when regulation and other rules are sometimes obsolete, due to swift changes in our environment, or when rules are enforced (or interpreted) by persons abusing their authority, or when we are faced with unprecedented situations.
Here is where organizational or business ethics comes to play. Not to replace compliance, but to complement it, to fill in the gaps, to empower common sense, humanity, dignity, fairness, and other universal values. We all can think of an example, where complying with rules was taken advantage of or even abused in direct violation of these values… Rules and rights are always going to be exposed to abuses for powerful interests, that is why we need ethical judgement to also be used by those in power to make decisions or can influence decisionmakers.
I strongly believe that this is one important role to be taken up by compliance officers and other compliance and corporate integrity professionals. In fact, I think we should all commit that our work-title should always include compliance and ethics professional, working towards enhancing ethics, hand in hand with other business professionals and leaders. Ethical values-based messages in words and deeds should be integrated very intentionally and regularly in organizational communications, HR, leadership, sales, and other business practices. In the end this comes to having ethics as key organizational and broader safeguard!
I am excited to discuss ways, tools, approaches, and steps on how to do this, with experienced fellow-professionals in the up-coming video-interviews, and with all of you, who are going to engage on LinkedIn and at the very conference!
Andrijana Bergant, president at EICE
