Ethics and compliance
Ethics and compliance are two misinterpreted words in organization settings. Though they look similar, their fundamental differences lie within their enforcement level. Basically, compliance is a law requirement. It is the act of a company to abiding by the procedures and policies as required by the law (Watson,2014).on the other hand, Ethics is driven by the discipline of doing what right at all times. Ethics goes beyond the legal requirements, “not all that is legal is ethical and not all that is illegal is an ethical.”
The main similarities between ethics and compliances are that both are made based on moral values that will benefit society in general. They describe the underlying behavior that is expected to be portrayed by all human being since law represents the minimum expected standards, which is ethical behavior (Higgins, 2018). Besides, compliances and ethics are policies that maintain moral values and act as a preventive measure of violence in an organization.
Ethical and compliances differ in that ethics is an internal behavior mechanism. The individual perceives what is right or wrong according to the situation and act accordingly. On the flipside, compliance is an external behavioral mechanism. They are laws promulgated by the general public to comply . They may or may not reflect ethical values, but they are basically what society perceives as right.
Organizations need to involve all stakeholders in creating a code of ethics to enhance their trust. ”Financial return was a driver of ethical performance, perhaps because consumers are willing to pay more for products from companies they see as generating a positive social and environmental impact” (Hagel, 2015). quality leadership is based on trust. In my view, it better to deal with an ethical office than compliance. Ethics ensures that all that the company deals with is right. But the law can omit some ethical values that they feel uncommon to all the organizations.
Hagel, J. (2015, Mar. 1). Ethics, reputation, and compliance gain as corporate priorities. Retrieved from https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2015/mar/business-ethics-and-compliance.html (Links to an external site.)Links to an external website.
Higgins, T. (2018, Mar. 30). Starbucks, other California coffee companies may have to put cancer warnings on cups, packaging after lawsuit loss. Retrieved from https://magazine.promomarketing.com/article/starbucks-california-lawsuit-cancer/
Watson, T. (2014). IPRA Code of Athens—The first international code of public relations ethics: Its development and implementation since 1965. Public relations review, 40(4), 707-714.
Thank you for choosing me to create a training presentation on ethics and compliances. Hagel (2015) argues that safeguarding a company’s reputations is the primary motivating factor when looking to establish and embed ethical standards of a company. However, there are several factors involved in setting decisions, such as stakeholders’ views, financial returns, and legal compliance.
(Gonzalez-Padron, 2015) describes ethics and compliances as essential factors that keep an organization out of trouble. Unfortunately, Volkswagen knows all too well about ethical problems with the recent emission scandal. According to Patra (2016), The Volkswagen Group (VW) confessed to manipulating emission tests in the United States in 2015. The company installed software into millions of diesel-fueled vehicles that would give far better emission test results than they have during normal operating conditions. “Transformational leadership is built on trust, where unethical acts aren’t acceptable. Volkswagen group leadership need transformation on leadership style because of the belief in personal identification by influencing the inspirational level of leader and followers’ perceptions about the internalization of the organization” (Higgins, 2018). Unlike upper management, lower-level employees work directly with customers. Therefore they need to be trained and guided on how to follow policies. In conclusion, it means they need to be a part of the decision-making process when new guidelines and policies are created.Rogerson (2018) wrote that VW violated several principles that we will go over here to prevent further scandals.
- The entire team should develop the software system. All members should contribute to avoid the formation of unethical software.
- No cover-up of fraudulent mistakes concerning the formed software. Bring forward any information concerning any illegal activity.
- Do not make false claims. Making false claims will be unethical because it will cause the downfall of the organization.
- Abide by the laws even if they influence the profit margin of the company.VM, by not complying by-the-law it had a worse effect on them.
- No company should develop and install unethical software. The (VW) installed software caused environmental and health dangers due to the emission of nitrogen oxide.
- Ignorance will never be a valid defense.
References:
Gonzalez-Padron, T. (2015). Business ethics and social responsibility for managers [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/
Hagel, J. (2015, March 1). Ethics, reputation, and compliance gain as corporate priorities Journal of Accountancy. Retrieved from http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2015/mar/business-ethics-and-compliance.html
Higgins, T. (2018, Mar. 30). Starbucks, other California coffee companies may have to put cancer warnings on cups, packaging after lawsuit loss. Retrieved from https://magazine.promomarketing.com/article/starbucks-california-lawsuit-cancer/
Patra, B. P. (2016, March). The Deliberate Deception: Case Study on Volkswagen Emission Scandal. Vilakshan: The XIMB Journal of Management, 13(1), 139-148.
Rogerson, S. (2018, March). Ethics Omission Increases Gases Emission. Communications of the ACM, 61(3),