Designing And Managing Ethics Programs
Days 1-2: Designing Ethics Programs
Achieving a culture of integrity within an organization can be greatly assisted and enhanced by the support of a formal organizational ethics program and structure. This workshop examines the essential elements of a comprehensive ethics program and structure. It focuses on program rationale, elements of an ethics framework, integration and implementation. The workshop identifies challenges likely to be encountered in the many stages of program development and implementation and discusses strategies to overcome these challenges.
Days 3-4: Partnering for Ethical Success: Aligning Organizations
Organizational ethics programs will not succeed unless all parts of the organization are aligned with the fundamental objective of building a culture of integrity. An ethics office within an organizational structure working in isolation does not have all of the necessary responsibilities, authorities or resources to build an organizational culture of integrity. This workshop focuses on how members of the ethics office identify, partner and interact with other organizational components in a joint effort to achieve the desired organizational ethical culture.
Ethical Leadership and Organizational Culture
Ethical leadership is a relatively new theory of leadership applicable to senior and middle managers. Senior leaders, however, are at risk of employee negative perceptions that undermine motivation and performance. This module discusses how to mitigate negative perceptions; strengthen organizational commitment; reinforce employee ethical commitment; set measurable standards of ethical behaviour; change organizational culture to align with organizational mission; and assess organizational exposure to ethical risk and public trust.
Major Components
Day 1: Ethical Leadership
In this workshop groups are formed to explore risks associated with executive leadership and discuss how such risks can be mitigated by adopting practices associated with ethical leadership. Participants will learn how ethical leadership impacts employee organizational and ethical commitment.
Day 2: Setting Ethical Standards and Changing How We Manage
We discuss ethical values relevant to the workplace, define ethical values, and identify behaviours associated with ethical values. We discuss how ethical values are related to motivation and a productive workplace, and assess the implications for senior and middle management. We use cases to discuss the moral theories underlying ethical values used in decision making.
Day 3: Understanding and Changing Organizational Culture
Groups are provided with a case of a dysfunctional organizational culture, which as ethical leaders, they must assess, identify the culture they need, and prescribe changes to achieve an organizational culture that supports ethical commitment. Discussions will include early intervention systems, and fairness perceptions of investigators.
Day 4: Assessing organizational exposure to ethical risk and public trust
Groups identify the factors that determine an organization’s exposure to ethical risk and public trust and apply the criteria to their own organization. For the organization with the highest exposure to ethical risk the group will determine a mitigation strategy. In the afternoon groups design ethics training for senior managers.
© Centre on Values & Ethics 2013