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Kinds of Codes
- Professional Codes of Ethics. Professions such as engineering and accounting have developed codes of ethics. These set forth the ideals of the profession as well as more mundane challenges faced by members. Engineering codes, for example, set forth service to humanity as an ideal of the profession. But they also provide detailed provisions to help members recognize conflicts of interest, issues of collegiality, and confidentiality responsibilities.
- Corporate Codes of Ethics. Corporate codes are adopted by many companies to respond better to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. These codes provide guidelines on particularly sticky issues (When does a gift become a bribe?) They also set forth provisions that express the core values of the corporation. These lengthy codes with detailed provisions support a compliance approach to organizational discipline.
- Corporate Credos. Some companies have shortened their lengthy codes into a few general provisions that form a creed. Johnson and Johnson's Credo is famous in this respect and can be found by clicking on the Business Ethics Library link provided above.
- Statements of Values. Finally, more mature companies find it useful to express and disseminate their core value commitments in Statements of Values. These form the basis of values-based decision-making. While codes of ethics clearly establish minimum standards of acceptable conduct, Statements of Values outline the aspirations that can drive companies toward continuous improvement.
Functions or Purposes Served by Codes
- Discipline. This function gets all the attention. Most codes are set forth to establish clearly and forcefully an organization's standards, especially its minimum standards of acceptable conduct. Having established the limits, organizations can then punish those who exceed them.
- Educate. This can range from disseminating standards to enlightening members. Company A's employees learned that anything over $100 was a bribe and should not be accepted. But engineers learn that their fundamental responsibility is to hold paramount public safety, health, and welfare. Codes certainly teach minimum standards of conduct, but they can help a community to articulate and understand their highest shared values and aspirations.
- Inspire. Codes can set forth ideals in a way that inspires a community's members to strive for excellence. They can be written to set forth the aspirations and value commitments that express a community's ideals. They can point a community toward moral excellence.
- Stimulate Dialogue. Engineering professional codes of ethics have changed greatly over the last 150 years. This has been brought about by a vigorous internal debate stimulated by these very codes. Members debate controversial claims and work to refine more basic statements. Johnson and Johnson credits their credo for their proactive and successful response to the Tylenol crisis. Regularly, employees "challenge the credo" by bringing up difficult cases and testing how effectively the credo guides decision-making and problem-solving. The CIAPR's Disciplinary Tribunal cases have served as a focus for discussions on how to interpret key provisions of the organization's code of ethics. The NSPE Board of Ethical Review decisions have also provided an excellent forum for clarifying ethical concepts (public safety, conflict of interest) in the context of cases brought to the board by NSPE members. The BER discusses cases in terms of relevant provisions of the NSPE code. Over the years, the NSPE BER has established a firm foundation for the resolution of difficult ethical cases by developing analogies with cases it has already discussed and clarified.
- Empower and Protect. Codes empower and protect those who are committed to doing the right thing. If an employer orders an employee to do something that violates that employee's ethical or professional standards, the code provides a basis for saying, "No!". Engineers have refused to carry out directives that place in jeopardy the health and safety of the public based on statements like canon 1 of the CIAPR code. (The NSPE code has similar provisions.) Because codes establish and disseminate moral standards, they can provide the structure to convert personal opinion into reasoned professional judgment. To reiterate, they provide support to those who would do the right thing, even under when there is considerable pressure to do the opposite.
- Codes capture or express a community's identity. They provide the occasion to identify, foster commitment, and disseminate the values with which an organization wants to be identified publicly. These values enter into an organization's core beliefs and commitments forming an identify-conferring system. By studying the values embedded in a company's code of ethics, observing the values actually displayed in the company's conduct, and looking for inconsistencies, the observer can gain insight into the core commitments of that company. Codes express values that, in turn, reveal a company's core commitments, or (in the case of a hypocritical organization) those values that have fallen to the wayside as the company has turned to other value pursuits.
Difficulties with Codes
- The following objections lead philosophers to argue that presenting codes of ethics in ethics classes undermines several key moral attitudes and practices.
- Codes can undermine moral autonomy by habituating us to act from motives like deference to external authority and fear of punishment. We get out of the habit of making decisions for ourselves and fall into the habit of deferring to outside authority.
- Codes often fail to guide us through complex situations. Inevitably, gaps arise between general rules and the specific situations to which they are applied; concrete situations often present new and unexpected challenges that rules, because of their generality, cannot anticipate. Arguing that codes should provide action recipes for all situations neglects the fact that effective moral action requires more than just blind obedience to rules.
- Codes of ethics can encourage a legalistic attitude that turns us away from the pursuit of moral excellence and toward just getting by or staying out of trouble. For example, compliance codes habituate us to striving only to maintain minimum standards of conduct. They fail to motivate and direct action toward aspirations. Relying exclusively on compliance codes conveys the idea that morality is nothing but staying above the moral minimum.
This module is designed to steer you through these complex issues by having you draft a Statement of Values for students at your university. As you work through your Statement of Values, you will learn that codes have strengths and weaknesses, serve different functions, and embody values. To get you started in this process, you will study a defective code, the Pirate Credo. A quick glance is all that is needed to see that codes are "all too human" and need to be approached critically. In a second activity you will identify the values embedded in professional, corporate, and academic codes. Working with these values, you will develop a list upon which your group will build its own Statement of Values in a third activity. Finally, you will construct value profiles that include a general description, sample provisions, value-based challenges, and value principles. These will all contribute to motivating those in your community to commit to and work in concert to realize these values.
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