MANAGING ETHICAL BEHAVIOR ACROSS BORDERS

Ethics reside in individuals, but many businesses nevertheless endeavour to manage the ethical behaviour of their managers and employees by clearly establishing the fact that they expect them to engage in ethical behaviours. The most common way of doing this are through the use of guidelines or codes of ethics, ethics training and organizational practices and the corporate culture.

• Guidelines and Codes of Ethics

       Many large multinationals have written guidelines that detail how employees are to treat  suppliers, customers, competitors, and other constituents. Other company also have developed formal codes of ethics.  codes of ethics written statements of the value and ethical standards that guide the firms' actions.
       a multinational firm must make a decision  as to whether to establish one overarching code for all of  its global units or to tailor each one to its local context. In order for a code to have value, of course it must be clear and straightforward, it must address the major elements of ethical conducts relevant to its environment and business operations, and it must be adhered to when problems arise.

• Ethic Training

      
       Offering employees training in how to cope with ethical dilemmas are the way that address ethical issues proactively. For example, line manager lead training sessions for other employees and the company also has an ethics committee that reports directly to the Board of Directors.
      The training sessions involve discussions of different ethical dilemmas that employees might face and how they might best handle those dilemmas. One decision for international firms is whether to make ethics training globally consistent or tailored to local contexts. Regardless of which approach they use, though, most multinationals provide expatriates with localized ethics training to better prepare them for their foreign assignment.

• Organizational Practices and The Corporate Culture

      Organizational practice and the corporate culture also contribute to the manager of ethical behaviour. If the top leaders  in a firm behave in an ethical manner and violations of ethical standards are promptly and appropriated addressed, then everyone in the organizational will understand that the firm expects them to behave in an ethical manner .
      Ethical manner is to make ethical decisions and to do the right things. But, if top leaders appear to exempt themselves from ethical standards or choose to ignore or trivialize unethical behaviour, then the opposite message is being sent.