Debated for at least 2500 years, and commonly understood to be the product of personal choice, ethics can be equated to the depths of the ocean. While there are some things that we know (e.g., the ocean floor contains water and ethics are the ground rules by which we live our lives), other elements are mysteries (what organisms live on the ocean floor and what does it mean to be ethical).

And, people are continuously exploring the depths of both.

Because ethics are defined individually, there are presumably six billion viewpoints about ethics on this planet. So what are ethics, and what constitutes ethical behavior? That depends, to some degree, on the person answering the question. However, organizations also demonstrate the standard of ethics (or lack thereof) held by those shaping the culture — whether that standard is articulated in an ethics manual or deduced from behavior, or made visible in the gap between the two.

Think of an organization as another ‘being’ with its own set of ethics, which may or may not coincide with each employee’s ethics. While it's true that organizations are run by people, organizational cultures (and market standards) often seem to take on a life of their own, thus influencing or regulating the behavior of the vast majority of people in them. Interestingly, in an InformationWeek Research survey of 250 Information-Technology and business professionals, only 54-percent say they have a personal code for evaluating the ethical and moral implications of business decisions. Of those who do, 67-percent say it’s based on their company’s code of conduct; only personal experience polled higher (70%). Other studies show that more and more companies are appointing ethics officers, while high percentages of their employees say they routinely observe unethical behavior at work and are fearful of reporting it.

Business ethics: Clear guidelines or malleable concepts?

Does that mean that there are separate standards for business than there are for individuals? And, are those standards pliant to accommodate market forces or shareholder demands?

One famous example indicates that this should'nt be (or doesn't have to be) the case. When bottles of Tylenol were contaminated with cyanide, Johnson & Johnson vice chairman David Collins decided to recall the entire product line — not just the bottles in the contaminated lot. Johnson & Johnson ultimately was absolved of any blame, and the company’s reputation was preserved. Collins’ response is cited as the textbook example of how decisive action, grounded in sound ethical values, can avert a crisis, and even bolster a company’s reputation over the long run. He looked to the company’s credo for direction when the crisis hit. The credo, written by the company founder in 1943, is a one-page document, and begins, "We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses, and patients, to mothers and fathers, and all others who use our products and services, and continues; We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community as well." The credo sets up a framework in which the responsible course of action became obvious to Collins.

Unfortunately, scads of other businesses and the business-journals executives look to for advice advocate another perspective. Take for example, the preview issue of Harvard Management Communication Letter, which included the article, "How Can You Tell if Your Teammate is Lying?" On the surface, this seems a far cry from ethical issues faced in the Tuskeegee Institute’s experimentation, for example; but look closer, and one sees that the article is assuming — and asks managers to assume — that their employees lie, and it’s their job to "reveal the hidden clues to deceit." Is this ethical, encouraging managers (and anyone else who reads the article) to assume that they have the expertise, based on superficial observations, to know when someone is lying (much less to assume that everyone is)? And if such deceit is the norm in corporate environments, what does this say of the organizations that create and sustain such organizational cultures? Where does the gray area begin and end in various ethical situations?

Desensitizing oneself to flexible ethics

A white lie here, fudging the truth there, or non-acknowledgment of the facts — if a person or business is willing to make these "lesser" forays into actions that are ethically questionable, what’s to say that they won’t go a step further the next time? If one routinely assumes that certain breaches are unimportant or irrelevant —as might be the case of someone who lies to his boss about the status of a project, or erroneously casts blame on someone else, or promises the consumer one thing while doing another —does that make one more likely to flex or redefine boundaries in a more serious ethical quandary?

Studies have shown that the more one watches violence, the less sensitive he becomes to violence in general. Apply that thinking to ethics, and you’ve got companies that grow to rationalize behavior that most people would find unethical. (See the stories of sweatshop labor, for example.)

Businesses worldwide are appointing ethics officers, creating ethical checklists and questions, distributing decision-making workflows to employees, and producing manuals and guidelines. But does this guarantee that a business, via the decisions made and actions taken by the people in it, is ethical? Not at all. What does? The behavior of the organization, via the norms established by the organization's people. Remember the saying, "Your actions speak so loudly I can't hear what you say?" Actions do indeed speak louder than words.

A true leader will ask, "How is my organization behaving from an ethical perspective, and what am I doing to foster those ethics?" He or she will ask, "What effect does my business have on other people, whether employees, customers, members of the community, shareholders or others?" These are not easy questions, and perhaps there are no neat-and-tidy answers. Yet the question deserves discussion within business organizations expressly because others are affected by the resulting behavior.

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