Free Essay On Ethics Recommendation: Halliburton

As the facts of the case point out, over the last two decades Halliburton has illustrated a deep-seated and systemic unethical corporate practices and behaviors. Moreover, the company’s unethical conduct seems to begin at the leadership level and flow downwards. In other words, acting unethically is official corporate policy and is accepted behavior of all employees. Accordingly, any attempt to change or improve its ethical standards most involve the efforts of the entire company from its senior management to its least experienced staff member; from its corporate headquarters to all of its many subsidiary entities. In order to accomplish this, there are a number of options the company should contemplate implementing. Indeed, Halliburton need to change its images. To be sure, its response to its involvement in some of the more notable scandals or recent years, such as the Nigerian bribery case, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and overbilling the Department of Defense, namely, paying fines and evading responsibility, has only solidified its public image as the prototypical socially irresponsible corporation. In order to restore its image, it should: reduce or eliminate the offensiveness of its actions, take public and transparent corrective actions, and exhibit a sense of mortification.
First, Halliburton should fire or otherwise dissociate itself from any leader, employee or subsidiary that is or was found to be involved in any unethical or corrupt practices. These steps should, furthermore be made ad public and unambiguous as possible. Taking such steps has a number of benefits. It shows that the company is taking proactive steps to remove the ethical harmful parts of its corporate culture while at the same time putting anyone else that was considering acting unethically on notice that such conduct will not be tolerated.
Second, it should take corrective actions to eliminate or decrease to chances of a recurrence of the unethical practices of the past while building and expanding a socially responsible, and ethical corporate culture. For example, it can establish an independent department of corporate ethics or a senior vice-president for ethical behavior. The purpose of the department or position would be to draft, implement, monitor and enforce company-wide ethical behavior. Naturally, such a department or position should have the necessary integrity, independence and authority to ensure that it can and will impose ethical behaviors on the corporation. To be sure, perhaps that first act of such a department or position would be a thorough review of the company’s code of ethics and analysis of why it was ignored or not followed in the ethical scandals Halliburton found itself in most recently. In addition, the department or position must operate in an open and transparent manner. For example, in reviewing the current Halliburton code of ethics, the department or position can seek outside advice, encourage and incorporate staff recommendations, and be open and available to all relevant parties in helping them solve whatever ethical dilemma that they are confronted with.
Last, but not least, now that its scandal cases have been settled, the company should admit its mistakes and unethical acts. What admission of fault or mortification does is provide an illustration that Halliburton itself realizes it has acted badly and that it wants to move on to a better position ethically. Failure to accomplish this makes it seem that rather than being sorry for the harm its caused, it is only sorry for getting caught. With such an image it will be hard for other to take any of the above actions seriously.