Never underestimate the importance of effective leadership to any program that seeks to drive ethical business behavior throughout an organization. This is true whether for CEO’s and other top executives or for the mid-level employee who assumes leadership for a multi-functional task force or a regional sales unit. While leadership alone will not ensure the desired behavior, since it has to be backed up by concrete implementation steps, the full engagement of top leadership will always be a necessary factor. Without a deep-seated and highly-visible personal commitment by leadership, some in the organization will discount the importance of ethical business practice as being only so much public relations mush or an organization’s flavor-of-the-year to which surface level deference is all that is required.
In this section, top leadership shares with us their experiences and thoughts about incorporating ethical business behavior into their organizations. Three major themes emerge from these discussions. The top leadership role in:
- Defining and reinforcing the values
- Articulating and promoting the commitment
- Building and maintaining an ethical business culture.
Other sections will address some of the issues of implementation in which top leadership plays a critical role by setting the standards and the expectations while sharing the responsibility for implementation with others in the firm.
In the interviews that follow, pay attention not only to what top leadership says but also the strength of their commitment to ethical business behavior. To them such behavior is not deemed to be merely a pleasant golden rule but rather something that is critical for the success of their businesses. Failing in this dimension can cause significant harm to the company’s many stakeholders and ultimately to the very survival of the firm itself.