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SA's gone soft on business misconduct

Corporate Sector. Picture credits: Gallo Images
Corporate Sector. Picture credits: Gallo Images

More than half of South Africans in the corporate world turn a blind eye to business misconduct.

And, according to the findings of the fourth South African Business Ethics Survey released yesterday, 52% don't report observed ethical lapses because of a "belief that the company would not take action and a fear of victimisation".

The survey conducted by The Ethics Institute found that these people accounted for "42% of those who did not report observed misconduct".

"While awareness of corporate ethics codes has increased, there has been a drop in the number of persons reporting ethical misconduct," a statement said.

"This is probably because South African companies are investing fewer resources in improving their ethics performance and, as a result, ethical business practices are still not well-embedded into the organisational culture of corporate South Africa."

Driving this situation, argued The Ethics Institute CEO Professor Deon Rossouw, "are probably the global economic situation and the poor performance of the local economy".

"Organisations have ethics codes in place, and people know about them, but the pressure to meet unrealistic financial targets is probably to blame for many unethical actions. At the same time, it seems as though weak trading conditions are reducing budgets for 'non-essential' programmes like strengthening formal ethics programmes."

Since the previous edition in 2013 the survey also found that there was an "11% increase in the number of employees who observed misconduct (to 25%)".

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