Managing Fraud Risk: A Practical Guide for Directors and Managers

The Business Ethics Toolbox

Introduction

All organisations need to be able to deal with pressure situations and commercial realities. Developments in business ethics over the last 50 years or so have provided organisations with a number of tools that are available for use by directors and managers in order to provide them with assurance on behaviour and standards of conduct by everyone in the workplace. There are four main tools in the box: value statements; codes of conduct and ethics; confidential reporting lines; and ethical training and development programmes. We look at each in turn below.

Value Statements

Put simply, value statements are expressions of an organisation's core beliefs. Organisations spend time and effort writing them in order to identify and connect with their stakeholders both internally (mainly with employees) and externally (mainly with customers). They should be seen as guiding principles, positive statements summarising the core mission and aspirations of the entity. An organisation's corporate values should be expressed and reflected in the way that the people working in the organisation act day-to-day.

By recounting my use of Enron's RICE model in the story at the beginning of this Chapter, I may have placed value statements in a mostly negative context. I will try and balance this shortly by turning to a more uplifting example, that of Johnson & Johnson. It remains important, however, that directors and managers are aware of the dangers involved in ...