Introduction

In recent years organisations have become socially responsible, to act with increased social sensitivity and to report on the organisation’s performance relative to its ethics statement to stakeholders. A well-known fact amongst business leaders today is that organisations that recognise the strategic importance of ethics within business and pro-actively manage ethics, reap the benefits of stakeholder confidence, public trust in the organisation and a good reputation.

Organisations wanting to improve their ethical health should pro-actively build an ethical culture by identifying ethical leaders, implementing ethics strategies and following a formal ethics management process.

Building an ethical organisational culture is a long term process, but renders long term benefits, including a good reputation and stakeholder confidence – all critical in ensuring sustainable business success and service delivery.

Managing ethics in the workplace hold great moral and practical benefit for leaders and managers. This is particularly true today, when it is critical to understand and manage highly diverse values in the workplace.

However, organisations aspiring to ‘walk the ethics talk’ should recognise the fact that organisational ethics is much more than a code of ethics with a few ethical platitudes to aspire to.