4.4 Developing ethics codes and statements of values  (Page 8/11)

Exercise 1: evaluating the pirate credo

Read the pirate credo. then answer the following questions individually

• What is good about the Pirate Credo?
• What is bad about the Pirate Credo?
• What is the purpose served by the Pirate Credo? For the Pirate Community? For non-members?

Exercise 2: statement of value challenge

• Is the SOV comprehensive? (For example, can you think of a case that it does not adequately cover? Are there values that it leaves out in the sense that they cannot be subsumed by one or more SOVs?
• Are the value descriptions clear? For example, if you have confused values on the multiple choice or matching sections of your exams, is this because the descriptions need reworking and clarifying?
• Last year, an ADEM stakeholder group suggested that values should be paired with one another. For example because integrity is a meta-value it should be paired with other values like trust. Or should trust and responsibility be paired with one another. In this case, should the SOV be expanded to explore the relations between different values?
• When ADEM stakeholders identified their values in 2005, they prioritized and ranked them. Justice was ranked highest followed by responsibility, respect, trust, and integrity. Should this hierarchy or ranking be changed? For example, last year stakeholders suggested that integrity should be ranked first because it is a meta-value that talks about the relation between other values.

Exercise 3: developing corporate codes of ethics

1. Ethics Bowl Corporations. You have been assigned corporations corresponding to two of the six ethics bowl cases. For your presenting corporation, you will be developing a partial code of ethics. For the commenting corporation, you need to familiarize yourself with the moral ecology of the corporation, its needs, and be ready to comment on the code offered by another group.
2. What kind of moral ecology is predominate in your corporation? Is it financial-, customer-, or quality-driven. Look at how the type of moral ecology structures other organizational activities: allocation of praise and blame, exchange of information, treatment of dissenting opinions, and central of moral concerns. All of these issues need to be addressed directly or indirectly in your code.
3. What is the ethical challenge that is highlighted in the ethics bowl scenario based on your case. For this information go to the "Ethics Bowl in the Environment of the Organization" module. m21191.
4. What functions are you addressing in your code outline? Looking above, these would include educate, inspire, create dialogue, discipline, empower, secure and express identity.
5. Develop within the time available a sketch of a code. This could be a section of a compliance code, a corporate credo, or a statement of values. In choosing your form, think carefully about the function(s) of your code. Have something that you can present, informally, for around 3 to 5 minutes.

Exercise 4: evaluating bona fide codes of ethics

Form small work teams of four to five individuals. carry out the following fours steps and report your results to the rest of the group.

1. Review a few sample codes per team.
2. List the values you identify in the codes. Express each value as a word or in as few words as possible.
3. Identify any recurring values.
4. Record and post the list of values.