Tag: Professor Leon van Vuuren

We should get some strategy consultants to draw up a set of values that we can post on the walls. Ask them to include the usual suspects - integrity, fairness, honesty, excellence, a passion for customers - and perhaps some cool phrase like ‘at this company we make magic’, ‘losing is not an option’ or ‘we make it happen!’. That should take care of the ethics thing that everybody is getting so worked up about.

Many organisations are reluctant to manage their ethics performance. Why? When leading practice has moved beyond the question of whether ethics can actually be ‘managed’ (taking it as given that it can), and huge efforts are underway getting the ‘how’ of ethics management right as well, it seems perverse to ignore this aspect of organisational life.

In an ideal world, successful private companies would distribute their wealth responsibly among stakeholders. Instead, many companies allow the unchecked pursuit of financial success to distort their thinking and their values, leading to extremes of wealth accumulation. In our materialistic society, displaying financial success is accepted, even overtly encouraged. However, many such habits lead to a deadly culture of arrogance and a (barely concealed) disdain for those who are less successful.