Culture Building
Creating and maintaining a strong ethical culture along with a focus on corporate social responsibility can have significant, positive benefits to a business including increased sales and profits, as well as increased employee loyalty and productivity. A strong ethical culture will help ensure employees are making good ethical decisions for the business on a consistent basis.
Examples
Company Snapshot: At Costco, Culture is King
BY JESSICA GUO The first of three Company Snapshots, these research-based pieces by guest author Jessica Guo look at aspects of successful companies that can…
Learn MoreAdams Consulting: Where family business & business ethics align
Better Business Bureau Ethics TORCH Award Finalist Adams Consulting discuss how to earn customer trust by following an internal ethics…
Learn MoreICC Restoration: Ongoing ethics
Better Business Bureau Ethics TORCH Award Finalist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEiRSP9IRhs Used by kind permission of the Better Business Bureau of Minnesota &…
Learn MoreCoordinated Business Systems: An ethical business system all-around
Better Business Bureau Ethics TORCH Award Finalist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39GuHVI6RkE Used by kind permission of the Better Business Bureau of Minnesota &…
Learn MoreCountryside Heating & Air: Ethics at the core
Better Business Bureau Ethics TORCH Award Finalist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEFmxJeV0M8 Used by kind permission of the Better Business Bureau of Minnesota &…
Learn MoreMonarch Builders: Ethical culture is the foundation
Better Business Bureau Ethics TORCH Award Finalist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndceV27nG8M Used with kind permission of the Better Business Bureau of Minnesota &…
Learn MoreAll American Restoration: Building ethics
Better Business Bureau Ethics TORCH Award Finalist Used with kind permission of the Better Business Bureau of Minnesota & North…
Learn MoreHandi Medical Supply: Keeping Ethics Handi
Better Business Bureau Ethics TORCH Award Finalist Used with kind permission by the Better Business Bureau of Minnesota & North…
Learn MoreHow to Make Lying at Your Company Normal
Earlier this month at the Beacon Theater, in New York City, Daniel Kahneman, famed author of Thinking, Fast and Slow,…
Learn MoreRedefining customer service
MOO uses its values as a model for what it means to be exceptional. You've probably seen MOO's catchy business…
Learn MorePractical Guidance
How to foster a corporate culture in virtual workplace
Ultimately, culture can change as a result of leaders communicating their values frequently and widely. By Rama Hart Special to the Star Tribune AUGUST 9, 2020 — 2:00PM Q: What is needed for organizational culture to stay strong in the new normal? A: While the new normal of our society going virtual has advantages and disadvantages, if an organization has a deeply entrenched history, its culture can remain fairly strong even after going online. Ultimately, though, culture can change as a result of leaders communicating their values frequently and widely. Policies also can affect culture as organizations move to more online work. We all…
Learn MoreFor some employees, work from home adds to stress
By Ernest Owens MARCH 14, 2021 — 2:00PM Q: How is working from home taking a toll on employees? A: There is a continuous optimization of corporations stepping into people's personal time and taking advantage of every second they have. It is meeting after meeting and that is causing a lot of heartburn in employees because they don't have downtime to refresh themselves. I think the firms are getting a good deal out of this because people are being extremely efficient. Now, you can argue that they're burning out faster because they don't have that sort of time to recharge or…
Learn MoreCorporate Culture
BY ETHICAL SYSTEMS The ethical culture in an organization can be thought of as a slice of the overall organizational culture. So, if the organizational culture represents “how we do things around here,” the ethical culture represents “how we do things around here in relation to ethics and ethical behavior in the organization.” The ethical culture represents the organization’s “ethics personality” (Trevino & Nelson, 2011). From an ethical systems perspective, creating and sustaining a strong ethical culture is fundamental to creating an organization that supports people making good ethical decisions and behaving ethically every day. There are several forces and factors that lead…
Learn MoreInternal Reporting
BY JEREMY WILLINGER Internal Reporting refers to any time that a member of an organization (or a former member) tells someone else about an illegal or immoral practice, if the telling is done in the hope that someone will do something to change the practice. In the great majority of cases, employees tell someone within the organization and don’t want to cause any bad publicity for the organization—this is sometimes called internal whistle blowing, though we prefer to call this internal reporting. When organizations punish or discourage internal reporting, bad practices typically get worse, until someone—often motivated by conscience—feels they must notify the press,…
Learn MoreTrust
BY JEREMY WILLINGER Ethics and trust are inextricably linked. We are interested in ethics in large part because we are concerned, even obsessed, with the question of who we can trust is a world where there is risk and uncertainty. In our relationships, we humans are much more concerned about assessing trustworthiness of others than we are in trying to figure out how ethical they are. So what is trust and what is trustworthiness? The mountain image on right depicts our human situation of uncertainty. Our lives are embedded in human networks where we need to assess trust (see Trust Choice Schematic). The…
Learn MoreCorporate Culture Assessment
BY ETHICAL SYSTEMS Corporate culture, a rather nebulous psychological construct, is nevertheless part of an organization’s personality. It informs employees—via expectations, standards, prohibitions, and norms, both written and unwritten—how to behave, ultimately driving individual and group-level behavior. This culture is also inherently and deeply linked to ethics, because individual employees tend to act in accordance with the culture which surrounds them, and use culture as a way to determine if their employer deserves their high levels of effort, or if undermining the organization is acceptable. We know what company culture is, and why we care about it, but how do we…
Learn MoreWhat really motivates people to be honest in business?
Each year, one in seven large corporations commits fraud. Why? To find out, Alexander Wagner takes us inside the economics, ethics and psychology of doing the right thing. Join him for an introspective journey down the slippery slopes of deception as he helps us understand why people behave the way they do. https://www.ted.com/talks/alexander_wagner_what_really_motivates_people_to_be_honest_in_business?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare This video is shared under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-ND 4.0). Please visit Ted.com. This TED Talk originally appeared on TED.com in January 2016.
Learn MoreEmployee After-Hours Behavior: Personal or Your Business?
What should employers do when they learn of unsavory activities outside of work? Social media use is sky-high. In 2019, We Are Social reported that there were almost 3.5 billion active social media users worldwide. According to GoodFirms, 98.55% of surveyed users access four or more social media platforms daily, while GlobalWebIndex cites people spending an average of almost 2.5 hours per day on social media. Social media used to be for friends and family. Now, though, the line between personal and public or professional life is blurred. Even if a user uses high privacy settings, they could be tagged,…
Learn More3 Reasons Physical Offices & Face-to-Face Meetings Are Not Going Away
The traditional, physical office is not going away any time soon despite advances in technology allowing people to work remotely, either at a home office, coworking space, virtual office, or another remote location (such as a coffee shop, library, or bookstore). Similarly, face-to-face meetings will not disappear, even though we can use email, phone, text, or virtual conference calls to conduct business meetings. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic reignited the debate about remote work, with some suggesting that it will be the new normal even after COVID-19 (Verbeemen & D’Amico, 2020). There are 3 reasons why remote work will not be the new normal and why physical…
Learn MoreGlassdoor Data Is Revealing the Link Between Culture and Good Business
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden elicited some playful teasing when, early in his presidential campaign, he rather quirkily took to quoting Immanuel Kant, the renowned German philosopher. In various venues, he’d paraphrase what Kant, in one formulation, called his “categorical imperative”—to treat people as ends in themselves, never as a means. On the talk show The View, for instance, Biden said, “We have to restore dignity to work. We have to restore dignity to the way we treat people...We treat them like they’re a means to an end.” Andrew Yang, another candidate, has hit the same note in a…
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