Governance

Ethics , Culture, LeadershipMr. Iftekhar GhaniDate: 24-02-2010

Ethics

• The word ethics is derived from the Greek word ethos, which means "character," and from the Latin word mores, which means "customs."

• Deals with what is good for the individual and for society and establishes the nature of obligations, or duties, that people owe themselves and one another.

Ethics

• Moral standards by which people judge behavior with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions .

• Ethics are often summed up in what is considered the “golden rule”—do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Ethical Factors

• Honesty• Objectivity• Integrity• Carefulness• Openness• Respect for others

Ethical Factors

• Confidentiality• Social responsibility• Non-discrimination• Competence• Legality• Human subjects protection

Ethical Codes

• One of the earliest law codes developed, the Code of Hammurabi, made Bribery a crime in Babylon during the 18th century B.C.

• Although the law does influence the conduct of some professions, many ethical issues cannot be settled by the courts. The ethics of a particular act is many times determined independently of the legality of the conduct.

Ethics & Law

• Ethical issues and existing laws may be at conflict at times.

• Decisive answers cannot always be given for many ethical issues because there are no enforceable standards or reliable theories for resolving ethical conflicts such as creating a dam that will dislocate ethnic population.

EvolutionPersonal Value

• Never take any action that is not honest, open and truthful and that you would not like to see widely reported in the media.

EvolutionReligious Injunctions

• Never take any action that is not kind, and that does not build a sense of community, a sense of all of us working together for a commonly good acceptable goal.

EvolutionUtilitarian Benefits

• Never take any action that does not result in greater good than harm for the society of which you are a part.

EvolutionUniversal Rules

• Never take any action that you would not be willing to see others, faced with the same or closely similar situation, also be free and even encourage to take.

EvolutionDistributive Justice

• Never take any action in which the least among us will be harmed in any way.

EvolutionContributive Liberty

• Never take any action that will interfere with the rights of others for self-development and self-improvement.

Ethical Issues

• Corporate Social Responsibility

• Corporate Governance.

• Political contributions made by corporations.

• Misleading financial analysis, Creative accounting.

Issues

• Insider trading, securities fraud

• Executive compensation

• Bribery, kickbacks

Issues

• Discrimination issues such as gender, race, religion, disabilities

• Issues surrounding the representation of employees and the democratization of the workplace: union

• Issues affecting the privacy of the employee: workplace surveillance, drug testing

Issues

• Issues affecting the privacy of the employer: whistle-blowing

• Issues relating to the fairness of the employment contract and the balance of power between employer and employee: employment law.

Issues

• Ethical relations between the company and the environment: pollution, environmental ethics

• Ethical problems arising out of new technologies: genetically modified food

Issues

• Product testing ethics: use of economically disadvantaged groups as test objects.

• Patent infringement, copyright infringement,.

• Ethical issues arising out of international business transactions; e.g. bioprospecting and biopiracy in the pharmaceutical industry

Issues

• Globalization

• Varying global standards e.g. the use of child labor.

• Multinationals taking advantage of international differences, such as outsourcing production (e.g. clothes) and services (e.g. call centres) to low-wage countries.

Culture

• Collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization that control the way they interact with each other andwith stakeholders outside the organization.

Values

• Beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members of an organizations should pursue and about the appropriate kinds of behaviour organizational members should use to achieve these goals.

Norms

• Guidelines that prescribe appropriate kinds of behaviour by employees in particular situations & control the behaviour of organizational members towards one another.

Culture Variants

• Adaptive Culture:Encourage innovative and reward initiative by middle and lower-level managers.

• Inert Culture:Cautious and conservative. Does not value initiative by the middle and lower-level managers - even discourage such behaviour.

Transmission: myths & stories

• One way to transmit values and norms among the members is stories and myths such as Gandhi’s frugal approaches that reinforced the national culture.

• Founders are known to have shaped national culture through their individual style of leadership such as the Martin Luther King.

Transmission: socialization

• Socialization is how people learn about the societal culture through interaction.

• Through socialization people internalize and learn the norms and values of the culture so that they become homogenized members.

Culture Variants

• Adaptive Culture:Encourage innovative and reward initiative by middle and lower-level managers.

• Inert Culture:Cautious and conservative. Does not value initiative by the middle and lower-level managers - even discourage such behaviour.

Leadership

• Leadership is not an exact science. Much of it still stays shrouded in mystery.

• All attempts towards understanding leadership has been through establishing a cause-and-effect relationship.

- Leader is tall because de Gaulle is tall- Leader is short because Napoleon is short

Leadershipelements

• Process

Transactional event that occurs between the leader and his/her follower.

It implies that a leader affects and is affected by followers.

Leadershipfactors

• Influence

Leadership incurs influencing a group of individuals who have a common purpose.

The group can be a nation, a community or an organization.

Leadershipfactors

• Group

Leadership involves directing a group of individuals toward accomplishing some task.

Without a group of followers there is no leadership and the relationship is reciprocal.

Leadershipfactors

• Goal Leading the group towards a common.

This is done through exercising power. Power of a leader is the ability to influence the group of followers towards attaining a goal.

• Power Variants- Position power comes from holding an office or rank - Personal power derived from followers through factors

such as being competent or considerate.

Leadership Survey

• Six different styles of leadership used in the survey are as follows:

• Coercive leaders Demand immediate compliance

• Authoritative leaders Mobilize people towards a vision

• Affiliative leaders Create an emotional bond

Leadership Surveysix styles

• Six different styles of leadership used in the survey are as follows:

• Democratic leaders Build consensus through participation

• Pacesetting leaders Insisting on excellence and self-direction

• Coaching leaders Develop people for the future.

Six styles

• Six organizational parameters used in measuring efficacy of a style:

• Flexibility How free employees feel to innovate

• Sense of Responsibility to the organization

• Level of Standards people set on their work

Parametersfor evaluation

• Six organizational parameters used in measuring efficacy of a style:

• Aptness of Rewards and how people perceive it

• Clarity people have about mission and values

• Level of Commitment people have to the goal

Results

• Most Effective : Authoritative style

• Runner-up : Affiliative style

• Consolation(tie) : Democratic style Coaching style