There seem to be a misconception when it comes to leadership, with many assuming it to have a direct correlation with one’s position in society, an organisation or whatever social hierarchy one has been bestowed. And perhaps this is what has led to ethical decay in our organisations, institutions and government departments.
To many, it is almost as if the decay in ethics has only just started in our society, in truth however, the lack of ethics amongst stakeholders that glue our society together has been an ongoing one, it’s only now that people are beginning to start questioning things and demanding to get involved directly or indirectly.
Take KMPG’s recent scandalous behaviour regarding VBS and Gupta associated companies for instance. How does KPMG, one of the most prominent firms not report irregularities regarding Gupta companies in almost a decade? Why did they not raise alarms when they are supposed to be agents of ethical behaviour? Who can forget Steinhoff, Mckinsey and SAP as reported by the media last year?
Have corporates and organisations at large succumbed to “do whatever it takes to sign the deal” notion such that they have pushed their ethical responsibilities to the backseat? Or has society at large endorsed this behaviour making consequences rare and often times not even imposed. Ethical dilemmas are not only faced by organisations, but by individuals as well, and perhaps this is one of the root causes of ethical decay in society.
Workplace pressures are enough to drive one to risk their integrity at the expense of their job and with the growing inequality and job losses in South Africa coupled with political uncertainty that influences the country’s economic growth, the question then becomes: how does one address ethics in today’s ambiguity?
At then there is the industry level ethical challenges in the form of collusion amongst other issues. Who can forget the three South African banks that were reported to have been involved in collusion concerning price fixing of the rand last year? Take this a notch up and look at societal and global ethical decay. On a global scale, issues are diverse, and one that particularly shook me recently was a video last year showing men appearing to be sold in Libya as slaves in today’s “contemporary” world.
Ethical issues are definitely not a 21st century problem because they have been going on for a long time and history bares record. How do we then demand every stakeholder of our society to account and uphold the moral principles we as individuals, society and the world at large deserve? Ethics are the most elementary, basic and fundamental values of decent human contact that do not require much to uphold, yet society has proven time and again that they are more complex than typically assumed.
Stakeholders and leaders within them should therefore at all times remember that they are the conduits through which ethics can assimilate to every member of society, thus by holding each one of us to a higher ethical standard, we are setting the bar for basic human interaction and in so doing, we begin to rebuild a society of accountability and responsibility. Each of us are leaders in our own way, whether it’s leading a child as a parent, a learner as a teacher, a department as a government employee or a business as an entrepreneur.
