It asks for a sound moral understanding, dedicated leadership and commitment by all role players.

There can be little doubt that the implementation of an ethical code constitutes a major part of an organisation’s ethics programme. A special effort is therefore required to instil this code and its underlying values or principles in the members of the organisation. This process, furthermore, like any other management programme, needs to be properly planned, organised, directed and controlled. In the third of a series on ethical codes, Col Riaan Louw discusses the implementation phase of ethical codes.

By exploiting their ever-increasing claims on the time, commitment, loyalty, emotional identification and attachment of employees, many organisations, through management, seek to build this commitment in order to tie their employees to organisational values and goals by means of sophisticated mechanisms. By institutionalising and internalising these values and goals, these organisations aim to strongly encourage employees, when faced with ethical dilemmas, to follow decision-making paths which are more strongly influenced by organisational than individual or professional values.

In this way they can ensure the moral identification of the employees with the organisation, as well as tap into their physical and mental energies. If the intention, however, is exclusively to regulate and manipulate conduct, this approach will diminish the underlying ethical aspect of the process. A more subtle solution, however, may be to enforce the organisation’s value system by providing a collective sense of right and wrong against which specific issues can be systematically assessed, as well as a system which will motivate employees to consider and interpret corporate issues from an ethical perspective.

At this point, it is important to understand that an ethical code, as a visible expression of ethical conduct, may be implemented in two ways: the product of the development phase of the code may either be launched with a bang, framed and hung in a prominent place and then forgotten, or it may be institutionalised and internalised through a variety of measures and its provisions reflected in the conduct of those for whom the code is meant. For obvious reasons, the latter option is proposed as the only option.

A corporate ethics programme will therefore constitute the basis for the implementation of an ethical code, especially as far as the training of management and staff with regard to the required tools and thought processes for the improvement of ethical decision-making are concerned. A requirement will therefore be that organisations devote more resources to training programmes to help members of their organisations to clarify their ethical frameworks and to practise self-discipline when making ethical decisions in difficult circumstances. It must therefore be ensured that their employees know how to deal with ethical issues in their everyday work lives.

The result will be that when the ethical climate is clear and positive, everyone will know what is expected of them when inevitable ethical dilemmas occur. This should give employees the confidence to be on the lookout for unethical behaviour and to act with the understanding that what they are doing is considered correct and will be supported by top management and the entire organisation.

Written codes and workshops on ethics alone, however, cannot make an ethical and legal environment. The reason for this is the fact that the ethical climate and corporate culture of the organisation is an essential ingredient in law-abiding versus law-breaking behaviour. This corporate culture may, for instance, imply cultural norms which dictate a code of silence about unethical or illegal activity, or rationalisations which permit illegal or unethical behaviour to be considered acceptable.

A code, accordingly, is of no use if a firm foundation for the understanding and requirement of ethical decision-making does not exist and if specific misconceptions, such as that personal values and organisational values are not necessarily the same thing and that there is a difference between individual’s moral lives and business lives, are not properly addressed. If a code therefore has a sound foundation, the implementation and monitoring phases of the code should follow naturally.

The all-important role of leadership in the implementing of ethical codes cannot be over-emphasised. In this regard, strong leadership is required in the fostering of collaboration among members to accept the code with its underlying values necessary for institutional effectiveness and integrity, to employ and utilise effective models of ethical decision-making and to ensure that training is conducted on an ongoing basis in order to internalise the code.

The code must furthermore be utilised on an ongoing basis in the decision-making process, to punish violations in order to instruct employees, to clarify appropriate behaviour and to refine the code. It is thus imperative to emphasise the importance of a strong leadership commitment in ensuring the inclusion of structural measures as well as reinforcement contingencies as an integral part of fostering an adherence to ethical and legal behaviour patterns.

In this regard, the importance of encouraging for instance internal whistle blowing to correct problems at the early stages rather than letting them go unattended, must be accommodated within the implementing system of the ethics programme. A further factor is the cardinal importance of leaders as role models for socialisation into the corporate group and culture, and their positive or negative influence through their conduct and verbalisations on all members of the organisation.

One example in this regard is the example set by management and other influential persons in the organisation. If so-called "significant others" contradict the values and content of the codes through the example they set, it serves to decrease the chances for the acceptance and implementation of the code. This also applies to the measure of trust in an organisation. A we-you division between management and the rest of the employees, for example, will make the acceptance of the code difficult. In such cases, a secret agenda is often read into the codes, which makes the acceptance of the code even more difficult. Leaders must therefore commit themselves to live the code and to serve as role models for subordinates.

There are a number of other factors that co-determine the acceptance and implementation of codes. Examples are the inclusion of the desired ethos, as defined in shared values, in all education, training and development programmes; open, reliable and honest communication of the shared vision of the organisation to all stakeholders, the use of systems and sub-systems interventions; and the accommodation of the management of organisational culture in the strategic management process to ensure organisational behaviour change and to support and reinforce ethical behaviour.

Also important in this regard is the use of workshops at all levels to internalise and institutionalise the shared values and to inculcate the desired organisational culture, the formulation of performance measures and the verification of these performance measures at grassroots level, the integration of performance measures with recruitment, induction and formal training, the formulation of the code, and a series of benchmarking measurements in order to measure the inculcation of the desired organisational culture.

The role of leadership, commitment, a will to make it work, creativity and innovative ideas within the organisation, will therefore determine the success of the implementation of the code. If this is not the case, it is most likely that many of those organisations who have developed codes, merely documented a list of do’s and don’ts, placed it in strategic spots and forgot about it. While some organisations indeed went as far as publishing documents in this regard and displaying it in prominent places, most seem never to have gone further than the development phase. The result is that many codes indeed are worthless pieces of paper and public relations exercises to project an image that does not really exist.

As far as the issue of exactly who should be involved in the development and implementation of the code is concerned, it is clear that this varies from organisation to organisation.A strong argument, however, is that, given the fact that ethical behaviour is the responsibility of the individual, and that people, not organisations, are the source of unethical behaviour, it seems only appropriate that the human resource department should play a key role in operationalising the code.

In this regard it is suggested that this department assists in identifying people from various areas of the organisation most suited to serve in a particular group such as a code formulation or ethics committee or a judiciary body. Other role players may include the internal legal department, the ombudsman and internal audit, especially with the aim to ensure that the code has "teeth".

Furthermore, they should distribute the code, hold ethics training sessions for new employees at orientation seminars as well as for established employees as part of ongoing training, and distribute representation letters to employees which may document that employees acknowledge that they are familiar with, and have abided by the principles pertained in the code.

How a code eventually will be implemented and its contents institutionalised and internalised, will, however, in all probability differ from individual to individual and from group to group, depending on the role and purpose of the code. It is clear that there are many ways and many existing management tools available for this purpose. It is, however, also clear that a sound moral understanding, coupled to dedicated leadership and commitment by all role players, would constitute a major factor in the implementing of a well-developed code.

* Col Louw, M Phil (Applied Ethics) cum laude, serves as the SSO Communication Information at the Communication Service of the SANDF.