ORGANIZATIONAL ETHICS: PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
By Susan Rosendahl-Masella, PhD
In opening her keynote address, Organizational Ethics: Practical Considerations, Dr. Taylor began by raising the following questions: "What is moral integrity?;" "How does one become a person of integrity?;" "How does a profession/institution/system/country become an entity of integrity?;" and "Why be a person/entity of integrity?" Aftter answering these questions, Dr. Taylor delved into the topic of organizational ethics, which she said is really about organizational integrity. She stated that organizational ethics involves "a commitment to promote that condition or state in which the system's moral activity (valuing, choosing, acting) is intimately linked to its conception of the Good, in this case, what a morally good system looks like." "Moral activity, Dr. Taylor said, " includes the way we think about health care, make decisions, relate to others, work to improve the health care system, and integrate professional and personal responsibilities." Dr. Taylor asked if there were differences between personal, professional, and institutional ethics, recalling that Aristotle had said that "one becomes what one repeatedly does."
Next Dr. Taylor talked about several myths about business ethics that can compromise organizational ethics (e.g., Business ethics is a discipline best led by philosophers, academics, and theologians; our employees are ethical so we don't need to pay attention to business ethics). If you have access to the internet, see www.mapnp.org/library/ethics/ethxgde.htm for further details.
Dr. Taylor continued by highlighting the many organizational ethics issues that are present in institutions such as recruitment, selection, and hiring, advertising, partnering, confidentiality, outsourcing, compensation, downsizing, and compliance programs to name only a few. Dr. Taylor emphasized that there is a difference between organizational ethics and corporate compliance. Referring to Paine's (1994) article in Harvard Business Review entitled Managing for organizational integrity (Vol. 72[2], 106-117), Dr. Taylor stated that compliance-based strategies were predominately lawyer driven. She said that the goal of these programs is to prevent, detect, and punish legal violations; they do not provide a guide for exemplary behavior but rather for moral mediocrity. Integrity-based programs on the other hand, emerge from the company's values. Dr. Taylor said that "these programs are characterized by a conception of ethics as the driving force of the enterprise"--that, "organizational ethics helps define what a company is and what it stands for." More specifically, she said that an integrity-based strategy is "broader, deeper and more demanding than a legal compliance initiative." It is broader in that "it seeks to enable responsible conduct;" deeper in that "it cuts to ethos and operating systems of the organization and its members, their guiding values, and patterns of thought and action;" and more demanding "in that it requires an active effort to define the responsibilities and aspirations that constitute an organization's ethical compass."
Dr. Taylor also discussed how to develop an organizational ethics program by going over the steps involved as well as the individuals involved, reminding everyone that organizational ethics is everybody's business or as Catherine Seeley and Sara Goldberger have said "from the boiler room to the board room." To conclude the speech, Dr. Taylor highlighted the characteristics of a successful organizational ethics program. For more details about Dr. Taylor's keynote address, an expanded outline is available for $2.50, which covers the cost of printing and mailing. Please call the Ethics Network at 718-796-2444 if you are interested in receiving the outline plus the NYCLTCEN reference list that was distributed at the conference. You will find several moral exercises contained in Dr. Taylor's outline as well.
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