Ethics Essay

Our Ethics Program

In this paper I will present an ethics program for our company. This ethics program includes: a code of ethics; an ethics training program; systems to monitor, audit, and report misconduct; and a plan to review and improve the ethics program over time.

Code of Ethics

For those of you who are familiar with the boy scouts, couldn’t most ethics problems be avoided if we all just lived in accordance with the scout law? “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” (Ward & Williams, 1998, p. 9)

In this code of ethics I will address; sexual harassment, appropriate language, abusive and intimidating behavior, integrity, honesty, bribery, fraud, and discrimination.

“Sexual harassment can be defined as any repeated, unwanted behavior of a sexual nature perpetrated upon one individual by another.” (Ferrell, Fraedrich, & Ferrell, 2008 p. 72). This includes anything in the workplace of a sexual nature that could be considered offensive by a reasonable individual. This consists of, but is not limited to; photos, magazines, videos, calendars, visuals on a computer screen, language, propositions, jokes, touching, groping, feeling, sexist remarks, comments about someone’s body, visual material, written material, emails, and gestures that could be construed to have a sexual character. If someone asks you once not to do or say something around them again, and you repeat that same behavior a second time, you have really crossed the line. Many of our employees are married or in relationships, don’t be flirting with anyone at work. You could have their significant other coming after you. Avoid romantic displays of affection at work, even if you are in a consenting relationship. Let’s keep a professional atmosphere at work and reserve the lovey, touchy, feely things for our time away from work.

Let’s keep our language appropriate for the business environment. There...