Ethical Management in Different Cultural Values Systems: A Case Study of Unilever

This report discusses the ways in which organizations can adopt ethical codes in different cultural value systems while identifying the needs of contrasting cultures and societies. It also discusses the impact of values and beliefs on ethical decision-making by employees and the impact of a company's ethics on corporate social responsibility and accountability. A case study of Unilever is presented.

ETHICAL
MANAGEMENT
2

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Ways Unilever performs to adopt ethical codes of practice within different cultural values
systems.........................................................................................................................................3
Effect of values and beliefs on ethical decision-making by individuals in the organization.......5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Ethical management depends on two main principles that are the human being and the
organization, which are the two main components of the business and that are closely linked to
each other. It commits to those employees who have accountability and responsibility as part of
the business or for the whole business to execute the different strategies and approaches which
not only improves the well-being of the company but also of it people.
This report will discuss the ways in which organizations can adopt the ethical codes in
different cultural value systems while identifying the needs of contrasting cultures and societies,
the factors that could impact the organizational ethics especially the legal requirements and the
stakeholders needs. Moreover, it will also discuss the impact of values and beliefs on the ethical
decision-making by the employees of the company and lastly the impact of a company's ethics
on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the business's accountability in a particular
business (Jukić and Puljak, 2018).
MAIN BODY
Ways Unilever performs to adopt ethical codes of practice within different cultural values
systems
A code of ethics is mainly a document or guide involving the principles that assist the
professionals to carry out the business activities with honesty and integrity. It can also highlight
the values, objectives and missions of the company which are based on the core values of the
company (Nair, 2020).
When enquired about their values, Unilever provided a document that specified a code of
conduct or ethics. At Unilever, they believe in enhancing responsibly and with sustainability,
their basic code of business principles elaborates the non-negotiable for their employees which
states their values, in which they clearly define what is being expected from their employees.
They bring values and purpose to everything they do, in everyday life and purpose.
Communication and awareness campaigns- Communication is a continuous process and this
policy of Unilever never ends. The main objective of this policy is to engage the employees and
also to spread awareness and concern about the ethical decision-making. The main challenge was
numerous identities that were being adopted. Although, Unilever created a wide communication
framework, a toolkit which included the guidelines, voice tone for communicating with the
employees (Patterson and Rowley,2019).

Training and reinforcement- Unilever offers the training of online anti-bribery. Although, they
also use face-to-face training , qualitative training with increased discussions related to the
ethical codes and conduct. Through discussing these ethical codes in the training sessions, the
employees can explore a lot. Employees at all the levels are required to know why ethics are
important for their organization, the reason and the way in which they will be incorporating
ethics into their decision-making process relevant to their jobs. It can provide them with the
necessary skills for performing within a situation in which it is unclear to them what to do.
Unilever includes the ethical challenges into all the training programmes such as the
purchasing, management, sales, etc. Along-with this , it also ensures that these ethical practices
are performed at all the levels of staff involving the board.
Encouraging context and culture- The ethical culture in Unilever represents that things in the
company in relation to ethics and the ethical behaviour in Unilever. To create and maintain a
strong ethical culture is important for creating Unilever that assists the people in making the
better ethical decisions and to behave according to them. Generally, in the company, the leaders
offers the resources to execute the structures and the policies that supports ethics. Moreover,
selection systems, policies and codes, orientation and training programs, formal decision-
making, authority structures, performance management systems are other formal systems that
Unilever inculcates to practice ethical codes among their employees (Rusconi, 2019).
Promoting the involvement of community- The promotion of community involvement leads to a
positive impact on the organization whether its growing the money for the local issues,
development of volunteer programmes for the employees and donating into the charitable
institutions, these all elements contribute to the promotion of the involvement of community at
all the levels which ultimately leads to a better culture, improves the reputation of Unilever and
make the employees feel good about themselves that they are doing something good.
The company also uses some other practices to make the code of ethics effective such as
setting up a committee of board to examine the effectiveness of the code, review the code in
context to the modifying business challenges, providing the copies of the code to the business
partners involving the suppliers.

Effect of values and beliefs on ethical decision-making by individuals in the organization
Values play an important role in the ethical decision-making. Although, there are
differences in what contributes a value in the context of ethics, a value can be considered as a
thing of worth. Ethical decision-making is a process of recognizing the problem, finding the
alternatives and choosing from them the alternative which helps in maximizing the most
essential ethical values while also achieving the desired goal. In other words, ethical decision-
making is the procedure by which the employees use their moral knowledge to identify whether
a particular issue is right or wrong. When the employees in the organizations make decisions and
take actions on the basis of their values, then it is possible that they are likely to make their
feelings more satisfied and fulfil their needs.
Indeed values are important and they help the employees to grow and develop and create
the future that they want to experience. The decisions made by the employees in the organization
are the reflection of their values and beliefs and that are always directed towards a particular
purpose. Ethical decisions develop and retain the trust, signifies respect, responsibly, justice and
caring and that are stable in nature alongwith good citizenship. These type of behaviour offers a
foundation for developing better decisions by setting up the basic rules for their behaviour.
Besides many positive effects of individual values on the ethical decision-making, there
are numerous negative effects of them such as the lack of the knowledge of ethical standards
among the employees, financial incentives, perfectionism, the fear of criticism or scrutiny by the
peers in the organization. Also, some employees may lack maturity at the personal and the
professional level, counsellor substance abuse, some employees may also lack personal values
clarification. Individual values include emotion, knowledge, thought, and at the last the choice of
response or reaction. There may be a lot of differences between the values of the individual
because values directs their behaviour which is why it is important to understand the effect of the
values on the decision-making. The process of decision-making refers to the making choices
among the alternatives which can also include inaction. Not all the decisions in life are required
to have large outcomes. However, the decisions that are different in nature and are crucial need
taking decisions which involves thinking consciously, gathering the information, and considering
carefully all the alternatives (O'Keefe and Brien, 2018).
In Unilever, the code of ethics has some key values that includes service, social justice,
dignity, importance of the relationships of humans and the worth of a person, their integrity and

the level of competence which sometimes lead to the development of clashes between the values
of the individual employees and the process of decision-making based on the ethics. Values are
the concepts that defines the objectives of an individual or a particular type of culture. Values are
considered to be personal and tend to differ among people and cultures. There are different types
of values such as ethical or moral values, doctrinal or ideological values which includes the
political and the religious values, social values and the aesthetic values. Although, while these
values are very crucial in defining the worth of the employees in the organisation, in many
situations they may lead to clashes or conflict with each other due the varying values.

CONCLUSION
Ethical management refers to developing the standards and surroundings for the
employees in order to make the appropriate decisions in an ethical situation. Moreover, it also
identifies the economic and legal responsibilities of the company along-with coming up to the
desired ethical responsibility as the ultimate task of the business and means the management
which functions with the ethical management keeping in mind the principle of behaviour with
the main attitude.
From the above report, it has been concluded the ways in which the organizations can
consider the ethical codes of practice according to the different cultural values systems and
recognizing the needs of contrasting cultures and societies, the effect especially the negative ones
of the values and beliefs on the ethical decision-making by the employees in the organization.
The report also discussed the impact of the business's ethics on the Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) and on the organizational accountability. Along-with this, it was also
discussed the factors that have an effect on the organizational ethics involving the legal
requirements and the desires of the stakeholders.

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