Ethics Readings and Resources

We have been sharing articles about ethics training, how to be more ethical and what makes for an ethical organisation, but what is ethics? The meaning of "ethics" is hard to pin down, and the views many people have about ethics are shaky.

Law enforcement agencies strive to recruit, hire, and train only those who demonstrate strong moral values before they enter the academy. Yet, even departments’ best efforts will not prevent instances of police misconduct from garnering attention. Such incidents undermine public trust, jeopardize important investigations, and expose agencies to considerable liability. Many departments respond to these events by adopting formal ethics training programs that focus on character development.

Citizenship behaviours at work are important. These behaviours are not formally rewarded by financial incentives and yet serve critical functions. A workplace with high levels of citizenship and prosocial behaviours leads employees to be more productive, engaged, satisfied, experience less stress, and reduce turnover. As a result, many managers and organisations tend to encourage their employees to be more prosocial and engage in more citizenship behaviours in the forms of helping co-workers in difficult times, promoting the company’s image to the public outside of work, and engaging in corporate volunteering programs.
Research has found a paradoxical effect of engaging in prosocial behaviours at work. Those who were initially most prosocial and engaged in the most citizenship behaviours were also among the most deviant at a later time; they were more likely to curse at someone at work, act rudely, lie, or steal from the organisation.

We have all heard the phrase "humble leadership" but what does it mean and how can leaders practice humble leadership? This article compiles the findings of many recent studies and distils them into useful advice how and why to develop a humble leadership style. Key points are that humble leaders improve performance, humble leadership works across cultures and organisations, humble leadership cannot be faked, and leaders have the most to loose.

Organisations spend a great deal of time and money attempting to train people to be more ethical. Are these programs effective in changing behaviour? A recent study of 1.2 million people concluded that yes, ethics training can positively affect conduct in the workplace.

82% of professionals say they'd take a lower-paying job to work for an organisation with more ethical business practices. This is just one of the reasons to offer ethics training for employees. Other reasons include trust and enhanced teamwork among employees, a stronger organisation-wide sense of responsibility for dealing fairly with others, a positive organisational culture with enhanced employee morale, a better brand reputation and the avoidance of costly scandals or litigation.

This article explores the factors that can contribute to acting unethically that can lead the holiday season to be the season in which we fail to live up to our own ethical values. You will recognise many of these concepts as those we have explored during this year.

Applying ethical principles in evaluation is about making fair and just choices relevant to the context, culture of participants and evaluation purpose. In fact, whenever we speak to a person – a participant or stakeholder - as part of an evaluation, we need to think about ethics. This type of thinking ensures that our practice, at a bare minimum, is risk management, and adheres to the fundamental principle of ‘do no harm.’ It also shapes your relationships with participants and stakeholders as one of trust, mutual responsibility and ethical equality.

Human Rights Day 2022 is commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights consists of a preamble and 30 articles that set out a broad range of fundamental human rights and freedoms to which all of us, everywhere around the world, are entitled. It guarantees our rights without distinction of nationality, place of residence, gender, national or ethnic origin, religion, language, or any other status.

Moral equilibrium is the idea that most people keep a running mental scoreboard where they compare their self-image as a good person with what they actually do.
When we do something inconsistent with our positive self-image, we naturally feel a deficit on the good side of our scoreboard. Then, we will often actively look for an opportunity to do something good to bring things back into equilibrium. This is called moral compensation.
Conversely, when we have done something honourable, we feel a surplus on the good side of our mental scoreboard. Then, we may then give ourselves permission not to live up to our own ethical standards. This is called moral licensing.