Leadership and Ethical Decision Making

Organizations need to have a code of conduct in place that is designedto help the advisory board, ethical auditing board and ethics compliance officer to ensure that ethical business practices are observed. If this code of conduct is implemented by every department head in an organization, the firm can develop, incorporate as well as produce accountability. By doing so, firms will develop very strong relationships with their staffs. Implementation of a code of conduct entails proper communication of the guidelines and policies to all employees as well as providing necessary training to employees in the entire organization in order to ensure that they understand the code being introduced (American Psychological Association, 2002). This code of conduct should be promoted and implemented by the management in order to direct all the employees. Therefore, this essay will aim at defining the role played by the management in implementing the code of conduct in the merged organization, the most successful communication plan for implementing the code of conduct, how to educate the staffs on the code, as well as key recommendation for dealing with the change management.

The management role with regard to implementation of a code of conduct is to maintain careful oversight of firms and its culture via direct observation as well as regular consultation with the board of directors. The management role also include observing the firm’s culture, reviewing the firm’s commitment and compliance to the code of ethics, confirming that the ethics procedures and policies are communicated and accessible to all the staffs, defining an investigatory policy, and assessing compliance with firm’s ethics policies (Dean, 1992).

To ensure proper implementation of the code of conduct, I feel that a proper communication plan will be of great importance.This communication plan would include; theboard of directors intentionally announcing presence of the code. This should be achieved by ensuring every worker gets a copy of code or already has access to the code. They should also ensure that every staff understands their role in order to abide to standards and provisions laid in the code.

To educate the staffs on the code of conduct, the management needs to determine specific ethical issues as well as situations that are related to the business. Subsequently, the management needs to come up with a list of goals which it wishes to achieve by establishing code of ethics for the business. These goals may include establishment of better employer-employee relations and employee-employee relations, increasing financial productivity, trust in work environment, improving communication as well as preventing illegal business practices. In addition, the organization management needs to develop a very perfect code of ethics with solid guidelines and principles for the organization as well as create a code of conduct handbook and issue it to all employees. Further, the organization management should set and organize a date for the code of conduct training workshop for all employees working in the organization and create a schedule and program for the training(Dean, 1992). They should combine the role-playing activities which deal with the solid ethical dilemma and situations with a chain of discussions and lectures. The discussion should aim at giving clarification of the ethical conduct in general as well as the organization particular code of conduct for the employees. Finally, the management should conclude educating employees on the code of conduct with question-and-answer period where they should give room for criticisms, suggestions and feedback (Wulf, 2012).

A strong code of conduct supported by an effective compliance program is a crucial qualityfor any businesses. Therefore, the board of directors in an organization have a lead role for setting proper code of conduct and ensuring that the firms has well established code of conduct supported by very strong compliance programs because compliance not only makes good businesses but in some instances it is required by law(American Psychological Association, 2002). Hence, to assess compliance to the code of conduct, one would examine whether the project has strong leadership, accountability, relevant training, clear written standards, remediation, effective lines of communications and forthright assessment.

In conclusion, to succeed in the change management, I would recommend the board to begin the change management at project initiation. Change management is more efficient when it follows structured approach therefore; I would recommend the organization to follow structured approach in order to deal with change management successfully. Finally, in order to deal with change management, I would recommend the organization to engage the employee-facing players such as executives, senior managers, middle managers and supervisors.

References

American Psychological Association.(2002). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct.Washington, DC: Author. Beauchamp, T. & Childress, J. (2001). Principles of  biomedical ethics. (5th Ed.).New York: Oxford Press

Dean, P. J. (1992). “Making Codes of Ethics ‘Real’.” Journal of Business Ethics, 11, 285-290.

Wulf, K. (2012). Ethics and compliance programs in multinational organizations. Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler.