Building an ethical climate in organizations : what leaders are doing

This presentation reports on a book project that aims to provide students, managers and other readers with an opportunity to learn about what CEOs – and their organizations – are doing to build a culture of ethics. Reports in the media often focus on the negative, with accounts of corporate scandals taking precedence over what is being done to build a stronger ethical climate in the corporate world. Given the preponderance of negative examples, there is not much insight into how leaders approach ethics in their organizations. Students and other stakeholders need positive role models and would benefit from a collection of best practices in business ethics incorporating the contributions of corporate leaders With this in mind, we embarked on a book project. Taking advantage of our combined backgrounds in business communication, finance and management, we examined the views, best practices, special projects and stories provided by CEOs concerned about ethics. Participating companies are listed among Standard & Poor 500 and/or Fortune 500. We then identified the kinds of behaviour, actions and initiatives that contribute to fostering an ethical climate in organizations. This approach contrasts with many models in the media, which are predominantly negative and one-sided, with the risk that students, for example, get a biased view of ethics in business. In this scenario, focusing on positive leadership role models is timely and can contribute to teaching ethics in business programs