Adedeji Awolesi

Awolesi Adedeji Israel

Ethics have become a major consideration in public, private and multinational organisations worldwide. It monitors control and guide human behaviour in an organisation. Ethics is doing what is right, good and fair beyond the demands of laws and regulations (Ethics, 2013). It is concerned with what is good or right in human interaction and ethical behaviour is when one does not consider what is good for himself but for others (Rossouw & Vuuen, 2010). Organisational ethics refers to the values, standards, code of conduct and code of practice within an organisation which determines how interaction takes place between stakeholders and the business. National Business Ethics Survey (2000), estimated that 60 per cent of all companies and 95 per cent of Fortune 500 firms have codes of conduct and companies with good ethics programmes ranked higher in employee satisfaction. With this, it is important for management to set code of ethics in an organisation.

Leaders in an organisation set the ethical tone in the organisation. They build, revise and maintain systems that support ethics in the workplace. They create ethical culture based on their knowledge and experience to share values. Ethical leaders lead by example. They are responsible, transparent and accountable and fair (Minnaar-Van Veijeren, 2011). 

According to Sustainablebusinessforum (2012), Frank Bucaro who is an expert in ethics leadership argues that there are four main challenges in ethical leadership. Lack in transparency in structures, decision making process, policies and procedure can deter employee’s view of leaders in an organisation. Lack of trust, accountability and in stewardship has a great impact on commitments of subordinates to mangers in an organisation. If followers don’t believe your word as a leader due to your untrustworthiness in the course of the relationship or the leader is not being responsible for his accountability in the organisation or the leader does not live what he preaches, employees will never be committed in giving their all to the organisation. With all these said, what exactly is ethical leadership?

In this context, ethical leadership is when a leader recognises and understands that positive relationships are the gold standard of organisational effort. This good quality relationship is built on trust and respect which are based on fundamental principles like integrity, justice, honesty, fairness, equity, compassion and trust (Covey, 1991). The leader recognizes the intrinsic worth and value of others and treats each other with sincerity with appropriate behavioural conduct as Robin et al (2010) claims.

Robert (1970) argues that an ethical leader should embrace servant leadership. This does not mean the leader will have sense of inferiority but will act as a servant to others engage in the organisation and empowers others to achieve success by focusing on the organisational goals. Brown et al. (2005) postulated a new conception of ethical leadership which emphasis on three key building blocks of ethical leadership: actively managing morality, treating people fairly and being an ethical example. The first block explains how leaders encourage normative behaviour against unethical behaviour through communication of ethics and unethical behaviours to subordinates while the last two describes the desirable characteristics such as trustworthy and being fair which the ethical leader should possess (Brown and Trevino, 2006).

In Bp, everyone has the obligation to uphold laws and behave in highest ethical standards as reflected in the organisational values and code of conduct (Bp, 2013). This provides the leadership with information and assurance on compliance themes and ethnic forum for discussion or change. In 2013, over 424 employees were dismissed due to unethical behaviour and over 529 in 2011. The company’s CEO chairs this and encourages every employee to act and work upon the company ethics policy.

In conclusion, ethical leadership empowers individual personal well-being; it energizes the team in which individual function in the organisation and brings out the best performance from the organisation as a whole.

References

Brown, M. E., & Trevino, L. K. 2006. Ethical leadership: A review and future directions. Leadership Quarterly, 17: 595– 616.

Bp. 2013. Sustainability | BP Global. [online] Available at: http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/sustainability.html [Accessed: 8 Sep 2013].

Ethics.org. 2013. Ethics Resource Center. [online] Available at: http://www.ethics.org/ [Accessed: 16 Sep 2013].

Ethics Survey. 2000. Ethics Resource Center: National Business Ethics Survey. [online] Available at: http://www.ethics.org/resource/2000-national-business-ethics-survey-nbes [Accessed: 16 Sep 2013].

Minnaar-Van Veijeren, J. 2011. Guide to organisational ethics. Namibia: Namibia Institute for Democracy.

Rubin, R., Dierdorff, E, and Brown, M. 2010” Do Ethical Leaders Get Ahead? Exploring Ethical Leadership and Promotability”. Business Ethics Quarterly. [online] 20, 2, pp 215-36.

Robert, G. 1970. The Servant as Leader. Minnesota. The Robert K. Greenleaf Centre.

Rossouw, D & van Vuuren, L. 2010. Business Ethics, 4th Edition. Oxford University Press, page4.

Sustainablebusinessforum.com. 2012. Challenges to Ethical Leadership in 2013 | Sustainable Business Forum. [online] Available at: http://sustainablebusinessforum.com/frankbucaro/74736/2013-leadership-ethical-challenges [Accessed: 11 Sep 2013].

Stephen R. Covey. 1991. Principle- Centered leadership. New York. Summit books.