Corporate governance and ethics (2)
Rather than discussing ethics in corporate governance, I began last week’s post by recalling the “feedback” received from you.
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The obvious truth is that regardless of the intention; the amount of pleasantness or severity behind “feedback”, its job is to attract attention to a missing obvious or (with minimal harm) dampen the spirit.
Overall, neither position can be taken for granted.
And, as a result of your feedback, the column's initial position, not to veer into the issue of the lackadaisical reception of the sustainability agenda, was quashed, resulting in addressing the issue as a matter of national interest to initially drive the agenda to tackle the menace from the grassroots (sustainability) rather than tagging along (sustainable development) with those seeking proper solutions to their problems.
Scale
The goal of this page is to have a general conversation and to promote sustainability education, but it just occurred to me that I am still citing examples from Enron, Parmalat and the Leman brothers, among others, because of the literature available, despite the fact that examples of such corporate attitudes that toppled/derailed organisations are not far from our doorsteps.
Consider Menzgold, Ideal Finance Limited, Midland Savings and Loans Limited, First Allied Savings and Loans, the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) scandal, contract selling by a former head of public procurement and Charles Bissue's Public Office for Profit.
But what do they have in common with Enron, Parmalat and the rest? The magnitude of disruption caused by the above-mentioned Western firms' activity is incomparable to what occurs in Ghana, but the concepts are catholic.
Truth be told:
• forging or misrepresenting official contracts or documents
• deceitful marketing and misleading advertising
• receiving or giving bribes, kickbacks or inappropriate gifts
• Engaging in activities that are harmful to the natural environment
• Operations that foster conflict of interest
• Absence of transparency
• Failure to comply with auditors and regulations
• Religion-inspired extortion
The incidences enumerated are not unique to the West; our region of the world is just as guilty as the rest.
The distinction lies in the fact that the West has established a pattern to correct these mishaps that will address its type of problem (case specify) and has realised that the sustainability aspect may encapsulate the other two, where the governance of corporate entities must run on ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability.
So, rather than simply following as before, or them assisting us in following their model without devising a “specific problem-solving’’ model for our situation, sustainability should be addressed differently.
Who would, if you have a template or are interested in conventional copy-and-paste practice?
And because we never prepare for anything - we just copy and paste without changing; scholarships are obtained year after year by citizens who are supposed to go out and learn something new (because we lack it) and return with better details to handle portfolios that need repairs, but it is nearly impossible to design a nation-specific agenda for what may be regarded as an unimportant subject like sustainability.
And all of these actions and practices are intrinsically immoral, tainting or derailing the corporate governance process.
Variance
The moment has come to be completely concerned about how enterprises, institutions, religious groups, policymakers and others behave in terms of ethics.
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Corporate governance guidelines, principles, procedures and operations dictate how a company is organised and define its obligations, responsibilities, and societal function. Recognising the ethics of certain corporate governance involves establishing explicit moral concerns and duties of a corporation in society and employing the ethical principles linked with these concerns and duties.
Globally, ethics fosters distinctive corporate governance, which serves as a framework for ethical principles and serves as an operational focus for a company's goals and actions.
However, according to Robert C. Solomon, many people see corporate ethics as an oxymoronic middle ground between morality and economic interest due to variances in value systems inside organisations, which requires it to be an illusion that all companies must or are living it.
Ethics
Solomon explains the origins of ethics as stemming from the Greek word ethos, which translates into character with a derivative phrase of ta ethika, which was used by philosophers like Aristotle and Plato in their studies of Greek values and ideals, and thus the primary concern of ethics is for an individual character relating to what is referred to as “being a good person,” and the second concern is for the overall character of society, which is referred to as “ethos.”
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To him, ethics is participation in, and understanding of, an ethos, the effort to comprehend the social rules that govern or limit behaviour, particularly those fundamental rules such as the prohibition on killing and stealing, and commandments such as "honour their parents and respect the rights of others", which may be considered moral.
So, the connection between an individual, ethics and social rules must not be limited to the context of a particular society because morality is tied to its laws and customs.
For example, in Ghana’s culture, public greetings and handshakes are acceptable. However, public kissing and generating a large profit from a business deal are frowned upon. Yet, all of these conditions are permissible in other countries.
• The writer is a journalist whose primary interest are minimalism, sustainable business, photography, society and culture, sports and tourism.
email: amaesonmensah@gmail.com
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