Best_Management_Practices_to_Improve_Organisational_Ethical_Climate

Question 5 Describe and explain actions, strategies, or “best practices” that management may take to improve an organisation’s ethical climate. Introduction Ethics involves the study of moral issues and choices. It is concerned with right and wrong, good and bad and many shades of gray in supposedly black and white issues. Managers are challenged to have more imagination and the courage to do the right thing to make the working environment a better place. This essay is going to see the importance of good business ethics and the steps involved in them. Why fostering good business ethics is important' 1. To gain the goodwill of the community. 2. To create an organisation that operates consistently. 3. To produce good business. 4. To protect the organisation and its employees from legal action. 5. To avoid unfavourable publicity. Steps or strategies used by managers to develop ethical climate in an organisation 1. Review any values needed to adhere to relevant laws and regulations; this ensures organisation is not violating any of them. 2. Identify values needed to address current issues in workplace. Consider those issues that are ethical in nature, e.g. respect, fairness and honesty. Identify the behaviours needed to resolve these issues. Consider values that generate preferred behaviours. 3. Consider any top ethical values that might be prized by stakeholders. For example consider the expectations of employees, clients, members of the local community. 4. Providing an ongoing training to employees for them to know what is expected of them and to help them understand that a strong ethical culture can protect the company’s reputation and actually enhance profits. Employees need to know that their ethical or unethical choices will have a direct impact on the success or failure of the company. 5. A code of conduct has to be enforceable, and a company needs to take actions when problems arise. This will help in finding flaws about the ethical codes and help in enhancing them. 6. When an individual is responsible for the code, and perhaps the wider values and compliance program, that individual could be usefully supported by a group of senior staff responsible for monitoring the adoption enforcement and effectiveness of the code. 7. In the case of existing codes, the organisation should undertake a gap analysis that considers the existing policy and approach and related communications and training programs, to identify what more is needed to encourage and support the expected behaviour and compliance. 8. The code and its implications should be communicated to all employees in all locations, and to business partners. Publishing codes on organisational websites is quite common. It should also be explained to new employees and partners. Conclusion From the above information, we can conclude that implementing a good ethical climate require lots of research and considerations for factors on which those ethical codes might have an impact. Managers must make sure that they are paying attentions to their stakeholders and community at the same time while implementing them.