ABSTRACT
Ethics management is often defined as the process of applying ethics to organizational contexts, aiming at promoting ethical conduct and impeding unethical behavior. (Frederickson and Ghere 2005; Kaptein 1998; Menzel 2007; OECD 1996; OECD-PUMA 1998; Van Wart and Dicke 2008) The field of ethics management deals with the “systematic and coherent development of activities and the taking of measures in order to realize the fundamental justified expectations of stakeholders and to balance conflicting expectations of stakeholders in an adequate way”. (Kaptein 1998, 42) Thus, management of ethics comprises shared values, beliefs, and expectations of members of an organization about how the organization encourages them to behave ethically and prevents them from behaving unethically. There are various tools available to manage ethics in organizations with which to promote the highest standard of professional conduct including ethics codes, ethics committees, ethics audits, ethics training, and other disciplinary measures for sanctioning unethical behavior and rewarding ethical behavior.
