What are the ethics of a manager?

Answer 1

Managers deliver projects that are defined, planned, monitored, controlled and delivered such that the agreed benefits are realised. During this process, the manager is responsible for conducting this business and ensuring it as done in an ethical manner. There are a lot of specific business issues that require an understanding of ethics such as winning new business (e.g. what are the limits the company places on individual employees especially when doing business in foreign countries that have different laws and ways of doing business), accounting practices (e.g. accounting fraud - ENRON), human resource management (e.g. fair recruitment practices), sales and marketing (e.g. price fixing, anti-competitive practices), production (e.g. not using dangerous products, sourcing materials from environmentally friendly and sustainable areas, product testing), property right (e.g. intellectual property rights, not taking company assets to rival companies), technology (e.g. making sure the products can't be used for war or destruction), and staying within the law (abiding by laws and customs). Companies normally provide managers an internal framework policy supported by examples, because it is so difficult to plan for every eventuality, Ethics Officers are sometimes appointed to help Managers resolve difficult ethical issues. Not all companies follow there own ethics policies. To make ethics work in the workplace, it needs executive support and monitoring, written down with consequences of not following it, doable and periodically reviewed, and be simple to understand in neutral language with references to where employees can get help and advice if they think they are running into an ethical problem. The real key is to get employees thinking about it, otherwise it will just be another process on the shelf that nobody reads.