Values in Tension: Ethics Away from Home

Motika, everybody knows the truth but nobody speaks. That may be felt even you are not part of the company because certain company may know that their corporate values were not just posted on the wall to impress people but values were valued, lived and practiced anytime, anywhere. We all have our own respective values that affect how we behave and even our cultural practices which its gives our leaders hard time to decide and judge if certain practice is acceptable, tolerable or wrong. As such, there were two perspective currently practiced by companies: absolutist and relativist. Both has its own advantage and disadvantages depending on the situation. Absolutist considers that any practice that is different as wrong while relativist believes that neither practice is sacred nor right.

Ethical check then is necessary if the issue violates three core values that every company should consider on creating their own corporate culture – respect for human dignity, respect for basic rights and good citizenship. On the other hand, despite of the ethical standards set, there may still a conflict to arise: conflict on relative development and conflict of cultural tradition. It is very important then for a company prior to establishing a business units to another country to ask and must answer NO to both questions: (1) Is it possible to conduct business successfully in host country without undertaking the practice? (2) Is the practice a violation of core human values?

The context for every ethical issue must be consider to avoid biases on making a decision as despite of diversity in practices still one practice may just overlap to other that neither right nor wrong. With these issue arising, company should also formulate their corporate culture to their employees, suppliers and customers that were practiced and was formulated and interpreted together with the foreign business units a company is operating that also aims to decrease the institutional corruption by living the ethics even it may mean losing the investors, deals and partnership.

Corporate culture and ethics defines how the company will treat its employees, business partners, and clients. When you deal with a company that their values were in-placed and practiced, you will then observed the motika moment of your life and the ease and familiarity of transacting with them. It is very important that every company has their own set of values to live not just for the sake of having one but these values define, set the standard of what the company is and direct as to where it is going.

In my previous employment, we have four major core values that were trained and refreshed every year to all employees: (1) safety and health, (2) respect for people, (3) highest ethical behavior and (4) environmental stewardship. Each of this core values have their own sub-topics that which every day before we start our work we allot 30-minute discussion of the topic and sharing of ideas and experiences. We also have this moment to pause every time that there was an incident occurred that violates our core values for us to analyse and share our thoughts of what happened, what could have been done to avoid the incident, and opportunities to improve the operation without sacrificing the four major core values.

These core values was been our way of life, and that always begins within us as we are the key to solve the problem. At first it may hard to adjust since we always want to shortcut, chose the easier way, and would deviate due to discomfortability yet as time goes by following those core values keeps me safe, people surrounds me and the environment. We put value to ourselves, co-workers, and customers not just to stay in the market to earn profit but to earn, respect and value life across global locations that were sometimes abused and violated.