A prevalent portion of corporate abusive behavior may be performed by persons who hold the capacity to have certain effect within an organization, and are responsible for its operation. Top-ranked employees establish certain pattern how a particular company and its workers operate. However, in cases where possible misconduct is tolerated, for different reasons including due to the position occupied by an offender, such malpractice may severely damage the corporate spirit.
Another drawback trending in the area of corporate ethics is the stagnated reluctance to act on equal basis with all concerned, and invoke necessary measures in the event of misbehavior. The co-workers’ willingness to report unacceptable actions of fellow colleagues likewise negatively impacts the corporate coherence and deliverable capacity. It fosters the emergence of non-envisaged exemptions that allow more staff to practice deviations from the established code of conduct. This approach disrupts the core principles based on which a company may operate, and hence decreases its value, as well as the value of its employees. Furthermore, this hesitation to report corporate malfeasance poses a threat to credibility as well as professional competence of a worker, and proves to be a fundamental issue for employers and other stakeholders within a company. In this paper, I have studied this issue in detail, and propose some viable solutions to tackle this dilemma.
There are various reasons as to why corporate peers fail to effectively report. One of such lies within the framework of counter-response to the respective measure. Exercising acts of vengeance has become common at workplaces, and hence there is a conventional approach to avoid such implications by simple abstinence from reporting. In particular, the sense of anxiety for corporate retaliation constrains the utilization of professional ethics in reporting about the wrongdoing. This type of response sets a misleading foundation for third parties that misbehavior is followed with impunity, and stimulating the raise of incidents of misconduct. Thus, a principal objective for companies’ management must be to ameliorate the habit of corporate revenge, which would also ameliorate the issue of non-reporting.
As regards the feasible answers to the problem of non-reporting, there are several foundations worth taking into account. Amongst others, an important criterion that significantly alters employee’s attitude towards professional duties and corporate ethics is sense of dignity a worker may experience with respect to a workplace. Accordingly, those employees who share satisfaction of their employer, in terms of an organization but not an individual, prove to act in more respectful and bona fide fashion. The implementation of other basic values essential for successful delivery by a company, such as well established expectations and clarity in managing business further contribute to employees’ professional commitment. It all rests with the confidence of personnel that the lead team operates equitably. In such case, the risk of possible misconduct on part of the workers should be minimal, and crucially, the likelihood for reporting upon misconduct is very high.
It is also important that companies combine resources in sharing the practical cases of corporate misconduct and subsequent failure to report it, as well as addressing this problem by outlining not merely ethical, but applicable legal restrictions.
The issue
The tendency to be engaged in corporate malpractice may be grounded on various factors, including the financial soundness rate. Workers are likely to be involved in less risky activities where there is no financial stability. At the same time however, companies’ attempt to transpose proper ethical rules and compliance standards has been more commonplace.
Despite the fact that corporate malpractice has generally decreased, there has been observed an elevated malfeasance on part of senior employees. Ultimately, this seems controversial as it is the management’s jurisdiction to initiate corporate behavior framework, and which is responsible for adherence to the established internal rules. However, it is particularly the senior level workers with managerial authority who have been reported to have abused the compliance requirements. It is further burdensome that there is constantly certain extent of corporate misbehavior attributable to employees, and consequently, a company.
As regards the strategies companies have commenced employing to tackle this issue, special budgeting has been crafted to spend for promoting corporate good faith attitude and conformity. At the same time, the alternative programs commonly practiced by companies are followed with engagement in unfavorable behavior. This is the case where economic crises are not in place, incentivizing employees’ desire to participate in uncertain undertakings. Essentially, the primary effort should be placed to accomplish two aspects, namely, (i) enhance executive’s conduct, and (ii) diminish office retribution. It is necessary to develop an effective and flexible compliance system within a company, as well as high-level practice of appropriate corporate behavior.
The remaining decrease in exercising malpractice disregards a few aspects that are regularly in place in the course of misbehavior. It is the corporate revenge and the intra-company’s tension that may arise and outweigh the emergence of unsanctioned conduct. Yet the established correlation of the improving economic prospects and employees’ behavior has also been a dilemma, with a possibility of different course of development.
Conventionally, greater stock market indices yielded higher levels of misbehavior. This may have been so as employees and employers aspired to evade companies’ compliance regulations to bring maximum profit. To the contrary, in the event of economic downfall, corporate conduct has trended to be an important subject for optimizing the companies’ personnel and ensuring their uniformly appropriate behavior, or reporting in cases of breach of such.
This alteration in companies’ approach towards conduct expressly demonstrates the specificities of economic restoration based on high-rated earnings and the positive stock dynamics. This is evident notwithstanding the comparatively elevated rate of labor inactivity. Two principal factors have also played certain role. In particular, the harshness of the economic crises, and secondly, the comparably quick rehabilitation from it. These two components fostered the boost of employees’ determination and preference to engage in risky occupations. Interestingly, there is some uncertainty as to how the misbehavior indices may evolve where economic rise becomes more booming, and corporate staff identifies more favorable circumstances for making their financial capacity more solid.
There is a chance that advanced corporate ethics and compliance schemes encourage the occurrence of new standards in employees’ behavior. Through various possible means, corporates seek to establish sustainable office practices, as well as more enhance the existing ethics and compliance plans.
The integral components that constitute such programs are as follows, in particularly, (a) benchmarks of ethical corporate behavior in writing, (b) special educational guidance as to how better comply with the pattern, (c) company materials disclosing details of corporate discipline and well-mannered behavior, (d) feasible tools aimed at enabling the reporting of possible breaches in a private or unidentified fashion, (e) implementation assessment of ethical behavior, (f) arrangements to enforce offenders. These all components may also be supplemented by a set of assisting conventions, and are commonly utilized altogether. Essentially, the performance assessment, along with the disciplinary framework are crucial. These fundamentals help diminish the rate of misbehavior, and establishing the perception of existing ethical behavior requirements.
At the same time, companies have been more successful in levying liability upon employees in cases of non-compliance. Such offenders may be subjected to certain corporate sanctions. Further, companies seek to disclose about their requirements resulting in overall awareness among the fellow colleagues.
Proper corporate ethical practices serve as prerequisites for more responsible and mannered workers behavior. In cases where corporate ethics is well exercised, the risks of unacceptable behavior are significantly decreased.
There may also be a trend of company-wide misbehavior where not mere individual, but the prevalent number of employees are prone to breach ethical standards, hence undermining credibility of an entire organization.
However, there may an alternative to such problem. It is worth accounting that in developed corporate ethics environments, such company-wide malpractice appears to be very occasional. In contrast, companies with uncertain ethical rules tend to be frequently engaged in misbehaviors. Therefore, it may be inferred that well elaborated and enforceable ethical standards help diminish malfeasance and prevent it from being a continuous and prevalent problem.
Workers may inform about the breach beyond an organization because they may require back-up, and desired to effectively terminate misbehavior or reduce its negative effect. It may depend on the scope of the misconduct, but there are cases where external assistance is essential to fully identify, register, and tackle the malpractice. Such preference to outsource outside third party to address the problem of ethical misconduct has also been reasoned by security considerations. These include the risk of dropping employment upon the initiative of an employer in the case of misconduct reporting, or again, the expectation of possible corporate revenge, which is also premised on unprecedented lack of trust in a company.
At the same time, there is a notion that internal reporting may also pose a threat to the integrity of the corporate internal environment, as well as damage employees spirit in the company.
One of the efficient ways to foster reporting habit amongst employees, within a company, is to eradicate corporate revenge practices, ensure necessary security for those attempting to report, and operate steadily not in favor of those not accounting anti-revenge benchmarks.
Corporates must provide confident business climate to ensure workers overall satisfaction. This would allow the more regular reporting by pleased employees for practices of corporate misconduct. On a psychological level, a person, having positive feelings towards the workplace is more prone to safeguard it, by confronting ethical misconduct. Employees satisfaction of their employer inclines them to do in turn for the company more than needed by job requirements. Therefore, corporate fulfilment helps employers stay on well terms with their employees, as well as contributes to the mitigation of cases of corporate misconduct and provides for its more secure reporting.
Regulation
The Dodd-Frank Act, together with the Consumer Protection Act contain provisions aimed at motivating workers to report corporate malpractice. These incentivizing regulations provide jurisdiction to federal government to grant monetary reward for assistance resulting in enforcement of financial extortion and other acts of misconduct. Such encouragement is designed to attract workers to report corporate misbehavior to the authorities. Additionally, the act legally safeguards those who inform about wrongdoings, which could likewise promote the internal reporting.
Importantly, a heavier reason for deviation from reporting is the potential whistleblower’s concern about the possible damage that may be so made to a colleague involved in the wrongdoing. Due to common distrust inside companies, together with severity of offence, the possibility of corporate revenge, and the ineffectiveness of internal recording of misconduct, workers often appeal for external assistance.
In light of the above circumstances and applicable laws, I have proposed some guidelines that may be effectively used to further develop flexible policies.
Accordingly, it is essential to analyze and outline the influence of reporting regulations under the Dodd-Frank Act. This is crucial to establish their effect on tackling misbehavior, as well as enhancing the available tools to perform enforcement. Therefore, a proper focus must be made to minimize the cases of retribution and encourage additional monetary compensation for reporting initiatives. A significant problem lies in the inaccurate disclosure of the impact such policies make on private sector. Although the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of the Whistleblower issues a report on the annual basis regarding the reporting practice improvements, and compensation incentives, it fails to comprehensively cover the implications of the introduced changes to reporting standards in the private sector. Therefore, there is a need for an unbiased evaluation of the progress observed in businesses with respect to internal compliance and corporate ethics.
It is also necessary to identify corruptive practices and strengthen sanctions for such misconduct. Bribery or related wrongdoings are commonly practiced on a company-wide, as well as individual level must be eliminated. Hence, more simplified rules with regard to giving presents and making donations would also help partially resolve the problem.
Along with the policy recommendations that may be relevant on the federal level, not less important should be the proper conduct of companies’ top management. In order to obtain the expected level of trust and corporate compliance from fellow employees, senior managers must reflect in their activities their aspiration for ethical and leading behavior. Properly administered ethics and compliance patterns within companies efficiently diminish the percentage of misbehavior, promote corporate awareness of effective rules, and instil the value of such conduct standards. Focusing on the importance of corporate ethics rules and conduct codes should be prioritized over non-reporting of company malpractice. Moreover, company leaders must ensure the availability of required means to ethics and compliance patterns, as well as strategically maintain the undertaken optimization schemes within companies.
Senior employees must also be in charge of delegating more authority to workers and ensuring their willingness to keep continuous employment with the company. Establishing reliable and clear communication with workers helps make significant savings on enhancing respectful ethics and strict adherence with the rules.
Company leaders must also account their conduct when attempting to introduce effective compliance and corporate ethics programs in their organizations. Senior management, apart from the operational functions performed, also serve as a role model for company employees. Therefore, workers tend to monitor behavior of company executives, and depending on their acceptance of misconduct or direct involvement in respective wrongdoings, difficulties may arise during the attempt to introduce for application of ethics rules to in-house workers. This entails serious implications for both employees and organizations where their leaders violate the established rules. Therefore, boards of directors and other executives must strive to maintain high-level conduct of managers of different ranks.
One more viable way of encouraging the ethical conduct amongst employees and their agreement to report misbehaviors would be by giving more significance to ethics in conduct evaluations. This could also lead to career promotion of workers who possess command authority. Administration must clearly convey the rationale that well-mannered and respectful work should be imperative for professional growth and remuneration raise.
Conclusion
One of the core problems in corporate ethics has been the reluctance to report misconduct of employees and company leaders. This leads to gradual deterioration of the working environment, as well as deliverables of an organization with such practice. The solutions suggested to confront this issue apply to policy-makers and company executives. Only through legal and practical introduction of corporate conduct rules, as well as their diligent compliance by top managers would help place new values and standards in the work of most companies.
References
Ethics Resource Center. (2013). National Business Ethics Survey of the US Workforce, p. 50.
Jennifer Arlen, R. K. (1997, October). Controlling Corporate Misconduct: An Analysis of Corporate Liability Regimes. New York University Law Review, 72(4), pp. 687-779.
Margaret P. Spencer, R. R. (1995). Corporate Misconduct: The Legal, Societal, and Management Issues. London, Connecticut: Quorum Books.
MEEHAN, R. H. (2012, July). Reporting misconduct. Fraud Magazine.
