Code of Ethics

The organization I work for is a Multi national corporation, for now we are a business unit of a publically traded company. This assignment came at a unique time as we the business unit I work in was just purchased by a private equity firm based in England. Our corporate headquarters is based in California and we have offices in South America, Europe and Asia. We are a unique organization as most of us work from home offices and rarely set foot in our offices, but visit our customer’s offices quite often. This model provides a unique challenge for developing a Code of Ethics (CoE); we must take into account the customs and norms of the regions we are working in. The CoE I have developed is based on the following core principles: Responsibility and Integrity, Communication, Confidentiality, Respect, and Sustainability.

We must practice our trade with Responsibility and Integrity. We should strive to do the right thing at all times for our company and customers. These values are important for our organization since we work closely with our customers often spending many days on sight while designing and implementing systems. We must be willing to take responsibility for our actions; we should not try and blame others or cover up our mistakes. If we make a mistake and try to cover it up, this will undermine the confidence the customer has in our ability to execute. We can see examples of company’s who did not conduct business with responsibility and integrity, by looking at Enron and Tyco under Dennis Kozlowski. Kozlowski showed no remorse for what he had done and acted as if he had done nothing wrong after being found guilty (Ferrel, Fraedrich, & Ferrel, 2011). On the other side of the spectrum Gap is a company that has acted with...

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Works Cited

Brandl, P., & Maguire, M. (2002). Codes of Ethics: A Primer on Their Purpose, Development, and Use. Journal For Quality & Participation, 25(4), 8-12.

Cary, P. B. (1992). What's wrong with the Navy? (cover story). U.S. News & World Report, 113(2), 22.

Ferrell, O.C., Fraedrich, J. & Ferrell, L. (2011). Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company

Johnson, C.E., (2009). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Krell, E. (2010). How to Conduct an Ethics Audit. Hrmagazine, 55(4), 48.

Payne, D., & Landry, B. L. (2006). A UNIFORM CODE OF ETHICS: BUSINESS AND IT PROFESSIONAL ETHICS. Communications Of The ACM, 49(11), 81-84.

RAMAMOORTI, S., & EVANS, R. (2011). The Corporate Ethics Audit. Internal Auditor, 68(4), 25-27.