Andrew Mitton

The Ethics Resource Cen­ter recently came out with their 2009 National Busi­ness Ethics Sur­vey.  Their find­ings?  We’re in an ethics bub­ble because of the reces­sion.  Accord­ing to their research, ethics improve when times are tough; they lapse when times are good.  This is an inter­est­ing conclusion.

Do ethics have a cycle, just like the stock mar­ket?  Is there really a cor­re­la­tion between ethics and the stock mar­ket?  I’m hav­ing a hard time see­ing how the cycles of the stock mar­ket coin­cide with ethics.  If this is the case, then we can pre­dict stock mar­ket cycles through ethics sur­veys.  There must be another expla­na­tion for the rise in eth­i­cal con­duct.  Per­haps in good eco­nomic times there are more oppor­tu­ni­ties to be uneth­i­cal.  Per­haps employ­ees are more judg­men­tal in good eco­nomic times because of a feel­ing that they’re not get­ting their fair share.  It just seems that there must be more to the story.

The other con­clu­sion in the sur­vey seems pretty obvi­ous: work on cre­at­ing an eth­i­cal cul­ture and mis­con­duct goes down. I’m glad to hear this.  If the oppo­site were true, then we should just throw our hands up in the air and call it quits.

The advice in the sur­vey: cre­ate an ethics com­mit­tee on the board, recruit ethics pro­fes­sion­als for the board, estab­lish finan­cial incen­tives for eth­i­cal lead­er­ship, encour­age dis­clo­sures about cor­po­rate eth­i­cal cul­ture, empha­size cul­ture and prin­ci­ples.  These are good sug­ges­tions, but I won­der how much these solu­tions will help.

Most boards are already full of com­mit­tees.  I don’t know how much an ethics pro­fes­sional will con­tribute to a board.  Money is the wrong incen­tive for eth­i­cal lead­er­ship.  I like the idea of dis­clo­sures.  It cre­ates account­abil­ity.  Which brings me to the last one — empha­size cul­ture and principles.

This is where the dif­fer­ence can be made.  I’m not talk­ing about more man­u­als and poli­cies. I’m talk­ing about inno­va­tion in com­mu­ni­ca­tion.  There must be bet­ter ways of com­mu­ni­cat­ing these prin­ci­ples that inspire and are mem­o­rable.  I don’t see these in the indus­try right now.