Are Ethical Codes of Conduct Toothless Tigers for Dealing with Employment Discrimination?
Organisational Codes of Conduct often include statements which exhort staff to make employment decisions (eg selection and promotion) based on merit and prohibit about discrimination, but how effective are these messages in terms of influencing employee behaviour? Certainly Codes of Conduct enable organisations to hold employees to account for inappropriate workplace behaviour, but wouldnt it be preferable for the Codes to act in a preventative capacity as well, ie to help create an organisational culture of merit and respect? Two academics, Lars-Eric Petersen (University of Halle-Wittenberg) and Franciska Krings (University of Lausanne) recently identified the conditions in which Codes of Conduct move from being toothless tigers to effective change agents. In essence they found that reminding decision-makers that they will be held personally accountable for breaches of the Code (eg discrimination), and providing a company based example, will improve the chances of a non-discriminatory
