Managing for Organizational Integrity- Lynn Sharp Paine

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Managing for Organizational Integrity- Lynn Sharp Paine

Lynn Sharp Paine says that ethics has everything to do with management. Paine goes on to say that “more typically, unethical business practice involves the tacit, if not explicit, cooperation of others and reflects the values, attitudes, beliefs, language, and behavioral patterns that define an organization’s operating culture.” This means that an organization can be viewed by its consumers according to its ethics practices. According to Paine, a manager who fails to practice ethical behavior is equally guilty because as a leader, they are supposed to lead by example and inspire people to behave ethically. In essence, Paine says that managers play a major role in shaping organizational ethics.

Paine highlights the type of liability that could arise from corporate executives not following ethical practices. These types of liability could be on a personal level or on a corporate level. Paine says that when executives act unethically they also deprive their organizations of the “benefits available under new federal guidelines for sentencing organizations convicted of wrongdoing.”

Paine says that an organization’s ethics should go beyond just avoiding illegal practice, and that they need to go beyond a punitive legal compliance stance. Paine gives the illustration of Sears where there were incentives for bringing more work so their automotive employees would often tack on services that the client did not need. The risk of liability and litigation has risen lately because lawmakers have stepped up penalties and also improved the support of law enforcement. She goes on to say that as managers have become more aware of the risk of unethical behavior, they have developed corporate ethics programs to detect and prevent violation. A lot of companies now actually have code of ethics. Paige goes on to say that managers are tasked with establishing compliance standards and procedures. She says that “companies engaged in international business often discover that conduct that infringes on recognized standards of human rights and decency is legally permissible in some jurisdictions”. This is to say that what might be okay in one part of the world might not be okay in another part of the world.