Finding Competitive Advantage in Managing Workplace Ethics

Recent high-profile ethics violations by large corporations have resulted in the closer scrutiny of firm ethics and management.To aid firms in creating appropriate ethics codes, some of the studied benefits associated with managing the business ethics process are examined and realistic methods for developing a program management process are recommended. Business ethics are discussed, as are codes of ethics.One area of interest is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which requires annual disclosure of a public company's code of ethics as applied to the CEO and the senior financial officers.The strategic benefits received from knowing how to manage the ethics process are numerous.The topics typically discussed in a code of ethics, a generic outline for such a code, methods for managing business ethics, and guidelines forevaluating ethics codes are presented.(AKP)