Empowering Ethics
As the pace of business change seems to move at hyperspeed, our understanding of the nature and purpose of business is also evolving… just not fast enough.
It’s time to look beyond the view that the purpose of ethics in business is to keep it from going down a wayward path. While we recognize that no company can last long without profits, we also hold that it’s unrealistic to have high hopes for companies that set their ethical bar at avoiding illegality and malfeasance. Our aim at JB is to help our clients achieve sustainable profits by drawing on positive ethics, or what we call Empowering Ethics because it is through the positive side of ethics that we discover what is best in ourselves, our organizations, and humanity. Empowering Ethics is a source of inspiration, not limitation. It opens the gates of resilience, innovation, and growth.
At Just Business, we are here to help organizations to tap into the great reservoir of strength that can be found when businesses are open to the goodness and insights of employees at every level as well as with all of their stakeholders. Our goal is to help companies to explore and channel the power of positive ethics as a means of accelerating a company’s evolution and to achieve a new spirit of partnership with all stakeholders.
Let’s refreshen our understanding of the place of ethics in business, beginning by distinguishing between negative and positive ethics.
We see negative ethics as comprising the norms that inform us of what not to do, such as lying, cheating, stealing, and harming others. Positive ethics consists of the norms that are good to do, but not required, such as an unwavering commitment to truthfulness, respect for the equal dignity of all people, deep listening, cooperation, compassion, justice, generosity, trust, personal growth, courage, creativity, love, and peace. One might consider these to be either self-evident or naively idealistic. We refer to these and related norms as Empowering Ethics, and we hold that if organizations consciously adopt them, they will be transformative. Moreover, we believe that it has been the widespread organizational failure to embrace Empowering Ethics that has permitted the perpetuation of structural workplace injustices such as the discrimination that has long impeded the career advancement of women and minorities.
JB is here to help businesses to reach new heights by opening their imaginations to the possibilities available to them when they embrace Empowering Ethics.
Looking back, as the 20th century was coming to a close, the ethics and compliance (E&C) profession emerged as one of the most important new pillars in the practice of business. Corporations globally have benefited from this development by invested heavily in training modules that guide personnel to recognize legal, ethical, and security risks and how to respond to them.
The field of business ethics, however, is still in its early stages. What has been largely missing is an appreciation of what makes ethics beautiful, powerful, and inspiring. Countless businesses have implemented programs to admonish employees to avoid things like fraud and harassment, they have been less capable or willing to commit themselves to create cultures committed to pursuing what is good, noble, and beautiful. This has been their loss. We can do better — much better. We at JB would be delighted to lend a hand.
At Just Business, we work with organizations to explore, discover, and put into practice Empowering Ethics that supports business success that contributes to social flourishing.
There can be no advancement without change. Are you ready?
Empowering Ethics Services
At JB, we don’t have a set of prepackaged solutions to offer clients. We rely on client-specific research to understand strengths and obstacles, to give voice to imaginations unleashed, and envision opportunities when a spirit of collective commitment is engaged. The following are some of the services we offer to put Empowering Ethics to work in support of our clients.
Empowering Ethics: Mapping, Mining, and Strategizing
Our work in Empowering Ethics typically begins with Stakeholder Mapping to identify a company's stakeholders, their distinguishing characteristics, and connections to the company. It is inadequate, for example, to refer to employees as a stakeholder group, since, generally, there may be groups of employees with distinctive responsibilities, experiences, and interests that may lead them to have particular insights into the organization's strengths and weaknesses. This mapping process provides the framework for our subsequent work with a client.
Stakeholder Mapping provides a framework for Stakeholder Mining, which refers to research within an organization’s ecosystem to uncover insights into opportunities for advancement, innovation, reform, and transformation. In this process, we seek the views of people at the heart of the organization as well as those on the periphery, those who feel they have a deep knowledge of the organization as well as those whose knowledge is limited or even indirect. Our aim is not only to understand what stakeholders feel about the organization but their perspectives on what it could be.
Stakeholder mining provides the data for developing strategies that draw on insights from within the organization’s ecosystem — strategies that are organic and potentially revolutionary. Our goal is not to create strategies for our clients, but to discover them based on what emerges when we investigate widely and deeply the various perspectives of those connected to an organization.
Ethically Empowered Organizational Cultures
Stakeholder Mapping and Mining gives JB an informed perspective on a company’s policies, procedures, and culture. We look for unrecognized or underappreciated strengths, innovative ideas, or unnoticed victories that can benefit an organization as well as structural impediments to an ethically empowered workplace. We understand that cultural change is difficult, and therefore our recommendations will follow from a methodical process of research and consultations to ensure we understand well the organizational conditions. Recommendations pertaining to cultural change will include monitoring to gauge success and possible program modifications as needed.
Pervasive Partnering
There may have been nothing more important to the advancement of human civilization than our ability to cooperate. While we all know that teamwork is essential for much work, it is also true that the contemporary workplace seems designed to keep people sequestered within small groups, departments, or subject areas. As a result, intelligent, well-meaning people find themselves working in environments dominated by a silo mentality. By limiting the fruitful exchange of ideas, companies can easily fall prey to groupthink that is incompatible with the innovative and vibrant workplace climate needed to flourish under difficult circumstances.
We use the term “Pervasive Partnering” to refer to an approach to organizational dynamics that seeks to systematically break silos and build bridges to enhance the exchange of ideas not only within a company but between a company and all its stakeholders. Our goal is to expand the innovation ecosystem and to reconceive the company-stakeholder model as one of partnership.
Communications Strategies, Programs, and Assessments
JB can work with its clients to develop communications strategies and programs to accompany the rollout of an Empowering Ethics program and support its subsequent adoption. JB will provide follow up research to assess program effectiveness as evidenced by its impact on an organization’s culture.