By Mwangi Wanjumbi
Exam cheating is still doing the rounds. The Sh7.6 billion Triton fuel scandal is not about to go away as yet.
Even the national maize scandal is not behind us either. All these bring to mind a very recent discussion at the British Council Leadership Forum, which was about business ethics.
The guest speaker, East Africa Breweries Chief Executive Gerald Mahinda tore into business ethics, a sensitive subject that many Kenyans loath discussing. How do these ethics affect our businesses, institutions and overall national situation?
"We cheat in primary school exams to secure positions in public schools. We cheat in secondary school exams so that we can secure future careers or admission in public universities. Certainly those who proceed to university continue with the same trend," said Mahinda.
Is this not the setting of a lifelong path dotted if not fully accustomed to unethical behaviours?
Unethical behaviour sprouts from our upbringing and especially our early experiences in life. Moral values are learnt from our parents, the environment, schools and even religious settings.
Meanwhile, ethics is, according to Mahinda, the discipline dealing with choosing between good and bad. It is about choosing between moral duty and obligations.
Business ethics is an opportunity to differentiate between yourself and the company that you work for. It, therefore, follows that a company is as good as the people who comprise it.
Ethics can be derived from religion, philosophy or culture. Moral values are, therefore, as important to a company as they are to individuals. Why? A company interacts with a wide range of interest groups hitherto known as its stakeholders. They include shareholders, internal customers (employees), external customers including suppliers, competitors and even the press.
How a company interacts with these stakeholders determines its successful continuity into the future. Recent research indicates that 84 per cent of respondents will de-link themselves from a company that is unethical.
Social responsibility
There are a wide variety of values that are or can be incorporated in a company culture. They include integrity, teamwork, social responsibility and customer focus among others.
These values provide indications on how a company treats or can be expected to treat its stakeholders.
They need to be documented and often explicit to the stakeholders. Not many companies take them seriously though. That is why there is so much entrenched unethical business conduct in Kenya today. But can this trend be reversed?
It is possible to reverse those trends if efforts are focused towards improving ethical practices. Above all, there is need for concerted efforts towards improving governance practices. Company leadership needs to continually walk the talk and at the same time provide the right role modelling. Inevitably, embodying values in entire company systems is desirable for sustained ethical business practices.
Companies are on the other hand encouraged to develop and entrench codes of conduct to guide day-to-day operations.
There is need for continued training of organisational staff particularly on the essence of maintaining ethical business practices. This training is even more necessary today, especially given the status of our society. Values are notably personalised and no longer embodied in our society.
This is especially so as a result of social evolution which has been the product of continued urbanisation of our society. Even those based in rural settings today have reasonable link with urban life even if only through exposure to television and radio influences. But how does social evolution present challenges to ethical business practices?
According to Mahinda, societal values have continued to change the mindsets of members. There is more pressure to perform especially upon perceiving material wealth as the foremost measure of success.
Moral values
This has inevitably led to a situation where moral values are thrown overboard. And this is not attributable to individuals only. In any case, corporate bodies are legal persons whose activities are conducted by individuals as their agents.
In pursuancing improved performance, organisations and even national leadership have resulted to promoting sometimes insurmountable ethical dilemmas.
Different organisations have excelled in tax minimisation strategies. This has happened through tax evasion or tax avoidance; outsourcing jobs from lower income groups in an effort to save on costs; preferential hiring based on gender discrimination and ethnic affiliations.
Another dilemma is corporate donations to non-profit making bodies including political parties. Some of these practices inevitably end up complicating business ethics especially with regard to enforcement procedures. This leads to subsequent preferential treatment or rewards in appreciation of past favours.
Even whistle blowers find themselves in awkward situations, sometimes risking their lives or livelihoods. These and many other ethical practices present grave instances of ethical dilemmas in business practices. Does it pay to uphold ethical business practices?
Without doubt, unethical practices only result to short-term gains. Many of these cannot in fact be sustained into the future. Sometimes, these unethical practices have far reaching consequences to organisational or national perspectives.
As a nation, we continue to pay dearly for unethical business practices. The same affects us as individuals as the cost of living rises through corruption driven inflation. Worse still, the resultant problems will continually be felt in not only our immediate future but also that of generations to come. In other words, we have only one choice.
We have to uphold ethical values as individuals or ethical business values and practices as institutions or risk destroying our future. Perhaps we need to borrow from Mahatma Gandhi who said, "You must be the change that you wish to see in the world."
The writer is the Managing Consultant and Chief Trainer of Newtimes Business Solutions. www.newtimesconsultants.com
