Ethical Violation

The concept of ethics is many times understood to be a private affair! It conjures different meanings to different people. To some people, it is for religious people (God’s business) or strict judges of behaviour of others (Institute of Ethics and Development Studies: Uganda Martyrs University, 2006, pp. 2-16). Whereas to others, as Fieser, (2003) it involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behaviour, to others, it is about values, morals, principles and accountabilities.

Whatever meaning is adopted, its application to leadership in organisations has seen many professions, associations and public institutions adopt unique practices that have over time been written or un written codes of conduct for members belonging to such organisations.

Ethical violations occur far too often in the different enterprises today so that codes of conducts in many organisations are simply irrelevant. This has in some instances created new cultures at the work places contrary to prescribed practices within the codes of conduct. The outcome of a survey reported by Al Gini (2004) as quoted by Hickman (2011) provides the best evidence here-that “because of the perceived low ethical standards of the executive class, workers feel justified in responding in kind…” and such responses will include not reporting for duty, stealing organisation property or diverting them, poor performance and many others.

In Uganda today, media reports and perception index conducted in the general public identify the institutions of police, judiciary and politics as avenues where the greatest violation of ethics take place. For this discussion, I will focus on an institution I had the chance to work with and one of its leaders.

This institution dealt with human rights, sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) among other issues. I had the privilege of working with them on mainstreaming gender and rights into their training curriculum and standard operating procedure (SOPs) or what you would call code of conduct while handling SGBV.

Women and girls were later interviewed in one district about their experiences with this institution staffs as they went to receive services that the institution offered at the time. This was in order to assess the effectiveness of previous interventions (mentioned above). The shocking revelations of the women: -

“The boss came in and found me being interviewed and he said to me, ‘what did you do that your husband had to beat you this much?’ I felt judged and knew I would never get any service or protection at all if the boss could speak like that”

In many parts of Africa just like in Uganda, wife beating for instance is so normalized because tolerance levels for such crimes is extremely high that a staff hired to provide protection services to victims of SGBV would normally not find it a problem to ask such a question in spite of the principles of non-judgemental attitude embedded within the ethical practice guide. Another lady had this to say: -

“Had it not to have been the strong will of the female officer; the boss wanted my file destroyed to kill the evidence. He had already negotiated with my husband who had also paid him some money. I would have just lost my child and property like that”

The said officer eventually lost his position when follow up was done, but the women continued to shun services offered by this institution giving them such a bad publicity.

This is how I see it: ethics as a concept appears to govern us more individually and interpersonally but in a public sphere, leaders’ decisions may pretty much be influenced by other forms of cultures and hypotheses based on other social considerations e.g. wife beating is a means to discipline a wife, women do not own property and many others-making ethical violation an all so easy task to accomplish in offices by the leaders.

Reference

Fieser, J. (2003, June 29). Ethics. Retrieved March 7, 2011, from The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: Ethics: http//www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/

Institute of Ethics and Development Studies: Uganda Martyrs University. (2006, March). Module 9 Ethics and African Development. Nkozi, Uganda: Uganda Martyrs University.