MANAGERS AND ETHICAL BEHAVIOR HOW TO EVADE CONTROLS

This paper examines some of the ethical dilemmas that project managers commonly encounter. But because managing projects is not a black-and-white endeavor, project managers are constantly faced with making ethical decisions about their projects. Project professionals are expected to always act in the best interests of their projects.

The Army Leadership Code consists of seven leadership behaviours: Lead by example. It is essential to note that Ethics are an essential to leadership. Ethical theories on leadership talk about two main things: (a) The actions and behaviour of leaders and (b) the personality and character of leaders. DirectorsвЂ™ and OfficersвЂ™ QuestionnairesCorrelating ethics with leadership, we find that ethics is all about the leaderвЂ™s identity and the leaderвЂ™s role. Includes the moral principles and standards that guide behavior in the world of business corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an integrative management.

Managers And Ethical Behavior How To Evade Controls

Almost universally, misconduct took hold in these cases because employees felt pressure to prioritize performance over compliance and, in response to such pressure, figured out how to evade controls meant to ensure compliance.Given the importance of ethical culture in producing positive outcomes and enabling business goals as well as its profound impact in preventing significant compliance failures, boards and executive management teams should make sure the companyвЂ™s approach to building and maintaining an ethical culture incorporate these key best practices: 1. There is no shortage of compliance failures to illustrate how a weak ethical culture can sabotage even the best corporate compliance programs. Institutional Distribution IntelligenceA strong ethical culture is essential to effective compliance risk management. Non-Traditional Exchanges & New Markets

This is especially true when responsibility for compliance falls on individual вЂњlineвЂќ employees and managers. Evaluate your employee-facing compliance policies so they enable rather than inhibit ethical cultureOverly detailed and technical policies can undercut an ethical culture. Connect ethical conduct to compensationВ and make it part of each executiveвЂ™s performance objectives.2. Appoint a senior executive as the Ethics OfficerВ (as a part time role) for each geography or business unit to evaluate and reinforce the ethical culture and Establish an Ethics Steering CommitteeВ comprised of senior business and operations executives along with senior representatives from compliance, Human Resources (HR) and Communications to ensure the ethics program is fully integrated in the businessвЂ™ operations While program management for ethics and compliance program elements can be combined, ultimately, an ethical workplace culture is determined primarily by senior executive management, not by an Ethics and Compliance Department.To ensure that managers understand their accountability for setting the companyвЂ™s ethical culture:

Include ethical behaviors in promotion criteriaWhen employees perceive that ethical behavior helps them climb the corporate ladder, it reinforces the emphasis that the organization places on building and maintaining an ethical culture. Use reading level software on all policiesВ вЂ“ targeting readability at below the average education level of your employees as many are likely not familiar with the topic.3. Post employee compliance policies on their own intranet siteВ supported by strong search functions and Create a policy committeeВ comprised of average level employees and managers to review new company policies to make sure they address employee needs with appropriate but not hyper-technical detail The implied message this type of policy can convey may inhibit an ethical culture, and instead, imply counterproductive messages such as вЂ“ вЂњwe are only concerned with bare legal or technical complianceвЂќ or вЂњyou could try your best but still get something wrong.вЂќTo demonstrate that compliance policies are ethical culture enablers:

Require a manager to document instances of employee integrityВ before a promotion to a senior level position and Incorporate specific ethical behaviors into performance and promotion expectations, such as keeping promises and commitments, upholding values while under pressure and demonstrating honesty and transparency Keep in mind, however, that a lack of unethical conduct is not the same as affirmatively demonstrating ethical behavior.To help ensure that your promotion process reinforces the importance of an ethical workplace culture: In some instances, this involves reviewing HR files to make sure there have not been any disciplinary actions or significant policy violations in others, it can involve credit, litigation or public records review to make sure that the individual does not pose risks to the organization before ascending into a position of greater trust and influence.

In addition to missing the opportunity to address an issue early-on, if the manager misses these signals repeatedly over time, the teamвЂ™s ethical climate can begin to erode as issues are not addressed and bad behavior becomes enculturated.To help ensure that your managers can identify and respond to issues effectively: An employeeвЂ™s offhand вЂњcommentsвЂќ at the end of a meeting might be viewed by an untrained manager as just office banter, but for the employee, who was likely mulling over this issue for days and the potential risks and rewards of coming forward, he or she just raised the issue to management and expects some sort of response. It is therefore all the more important to train managers to recognize signals from their employees. Prepare managers to identify and respond to employee ethics and compliance concernsAs with most workplace concerns, employees are most likely to raise ethics and compliance concerns with their managers вЂ“ in most studies, reporting to management is favored by large margins over going to HR, the law department or the hotline.

In 2014, he received the Outstanding In-House Counsel Award from the Association of Corporate Counsel-National Capital Region for his work in the area of corporate ethics and compliance.The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc. Michael has led industry working groups on developing best practices for corporate ethics programs and is a frequent speaker on ethics and compliance topics. Reinforce the importance of engaging company resources quicklyВ rather than trying to solve the problem themselves.The author, Michael Kallens, is an Associate General Counsel in NasdaqвЂ™s Office of General Counsel and is a senior member of NasdaqвЂ™s Global Ethics and Compliance Team. Provide managers toolkits on how to respond to employee concerns, including what to say and who to contact based on the issue involved and