19 - Ethical codes at work

Summary

What is related to general human inclinations and needs has a market price … but that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself has not merely a relative worth, that is, a price, but an inner worth, that is, a dignity.

(Kant 1997)

Kant's remarks, and the idea of the intrinsic worth of people, are central to the meaning of humanism. It suggests that everyone already has an intrinsic worth and that, in this sense, there is nothing that people have to do to gain dignity. However, there may well be actions that they or others might take that could detract from human dignity. In a business context, as elsewhere, those behaviors that detract from human dignity involve a loss of integrity.

This chapter looks at how, at an individual level, the humanity of our work can be preserved in a business context. It first reviews the formal regulation of integrity in terms of “doing the right thing” and then discusses the other meaning of integrity: honesty, interpreted as personal transparency. The chapter concludes with an acknowledgement of the difficulty of maintaining integrity in the workplace.

Encoding integrity

One way of maintaining integrity might seem to work within an agreed code of conduct. Codes of conduct, developed by the companies themselves, are becoming increasingly popular, especially in large companies. These codes ostensibly seek to ensure that employees – and therefore the company as a whole – behave properly.