What are the potential risks to a company of unethical behaviors by employees? What are potential risks to the public and to stakeholder?
Corporate ethics codes are often faulted for being “window dressing”—that is, for having little or no effect on actual behavior. Financial ethics expert John Dobson says day-to-day behavior in the workplace “acculturates” employees—teaches them that the behavior they see is rational and acceptable in that environment Dobson takes issue with the notion of “neoclassical economic theory which states that people are material opportunists who will readily jettison honesty and integrity in favor of guile and deceit whenever the latter are more likely to maximize some payoff function.”