resultsthroughintegrity

WRONG DOING, INTEGRITY AND NON-VIOLENCE

The world is a strange place with unwritten rules.

Some are rewarded for wrong doing. Others are not punished when they turn a blind eye. 

I broke that covenant at work.  I called the wrong doing. The consequence was termination.   

The details don’t matter.  It is the same everywhere. The people with power see themselves as right and those that oppose them are wrong.  

INTEGRITY AND TRUST ARE FREE

Integrity and trust are free and the ultimate in “what is in this for me”.

It is realizing all that you can be.

Integrity and trust are the cornerstones of journey from possibility to actualization. They take you from separateness, stagnation and perception to completeness, growth and reality.  

The potential for integrity and trust exist in the here and now of ordinary existence. Every day choices about small things like eating and or big things like work offer us the opportunity to pursue integrity and build trust.

Every choice has a consequence that either adds or subtracts from your integrity and trust.   

Integrity is the optimal experience. The process of its realization is the path way to an authentic individuated life. It is the ultimate journey into the mysteries of one’s life.  

INTEGRITY AND TRUST ARE THE ESSENCE OF EVERYTHING SUCCESSFUL

Integrity and trust are real and observable. They are the essence of everything successful.

Yet we know so little about them.

Even though we have no commonly accepted definition, integrity and trust are critical variables in every choice we make -whether it is consumer products, or the selection of a mate or friends.

We easily judge levels of integrity and trust in others but have trouble assessing it within ourselves. 

We say integrity and trust are critical to professional success, yet we have no way to develop them.

Integrity is your unique potential and possibility.  It is your value added proposition

SYNERGY IS AN OUTCOME OF INTEGRITY

It can’t be but it is!

Think about it, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

This is like saying 2+2 is not four but more.

Synergy means that things work together.

Words can’t explain the essence of this. We know it and want it but what and how do we get it?  

For a long time, the known world had no thought of synergy. The second law of thermodynamics dominated. It stated that everything will increase in entropy.

In other words, disintegration is the way of the world and chaos is destiny.  

And since we are of the world, well then ….the way and end are clear.

INTEGRITY DRIVEN PERFORMANCE

Does integrity drive performance? Apparently it does.

Novartis, a leading healthcare company, has adopted a philosophy that places integrity at the center of their strategy for success.

“Leading Companies, see integrity not as obstacle to competitiveness but as a driver of differentiation.”
Dan Ostergaard, Head of Corporate integrity, Novartis 

PricewaterhouseCoopers developed an integrity driven performance model that centers on governance, transparency and accountability reform. 

“This strategy suggests that business integrity, ethics and values do not detract from performance but, in fact, add to business performance when appropriately integrated throughout an organization.” PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Both approaches demonstrate practical ways to realize results through integrity.   

WORKPLACE MISCONDUCT

Albert Camus said that integrity has no need of rules.

KPMG in their 2008-09 integrity survey conclude that there is a real need for integrity in the workplace.

The survey reports that 3700 out of 5000 employees say they have seen or know of wrong doing or misconduct in the workplace.

 

IF IT’S LEGAL THEN SURELY IT’S ETHICAL?

The economist Milton Friedman argues that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud”(1).

 These “rules of the game” are to be understood as a particular society's laws. In a nutshell, Friedman is arguing that business people are ethical if and only if they struggle to increase their profits and that they are entitled as part of that struggle to do whatever the law permits.

 As long as a person's profit-maximizing actions conform to the law and professional rules, he is, in Friedman's view, acting ethically.

 Ethics is not rules.

The activities of businesses under the Nazi regime should be sufficient to show that morality (2) and law are distinct. Helping to build extermination camps was legal and good for profits but it was not ethical. Even in a more just society, laws often state only a minimum requirement, usually what is enforceable in practice, rather than what is right.

 Yet Friedman’s answer is the most common one in business today.

Friedman’s approach to ethics is limited because rules cannot cover every situation. An ethical code that simply gives detailed rules and nothing else will sink under pressure either from clever people who find ways round the rules or from new situations the rules don’t cover.

 Another very real problem for investors who take law as their professional moral guide is the different laws that operate in the different countries where they do business. While the sale of the pesticide DDT is illegal in the EU, it is legal in many less developed countries. Does that make it morally acceptable to invest in factories producing DDT in poor countries?

 What distinguishes ethics from rules is that rules tell you how to act while ethics tells you how to think before acting.

 If rules are the bricks with which we build the house that shelters us from greed and selfishness, then the foundations of that house are ethics. Without ethical foundations, the house of rules will collapse under the growing weight of regulations and the pressure of financial storms.

 So what is ethics?

Integrity In Practice

What is Integrity? What is business Ethics?

We begin by answering head-on the questions “What is Integrity?" and “What is Business Ethics?"

We do this in a way that is analytic but which we hope is easily understood by the majority of our audience.

Whilst we believe that most people have an intuitive sense of right and wrong, it is clear that an analytic understanding of integrity is no longer a significant part of our educational or cultural curriculum.

This makes integrity difficult to implement in practice as people try to resolve issues of principle and profit in their working lives.

Indeed, some people even fail to recognize that they are facing an ethical decision.

We also believe that the conflict between people’s intuitive sense of doing the right thing and the practical demands of their job generates a lot of the stress felt by many.

Integrity Based Problem Solving

By  Douglas Ross

What is the problem with problems?

Most people believe that their problems are unique to them. Many people believe problems are not a good thing to have.

Some people make a living solving other people’s problems. And then there is me ….

My problem is that I see problems like mosquitoes hovering around me in the woods and frankly they just bug me. I want to know the nature of problems and more importantly how to get rid of them.

Agreements, Integrity and Trust at Work

By

Peter G. Vajda, Ph.D.

 Healthy and conscious relationships are open, honest, safe and trustworthy, where people are acting and being in integrity. One of the major foundation blocks of open, safe and trusting relationships is that of keeping agreements.

The foundation of healthy relationships begins to atrophy and crumble when one feels betrayed. One feels betrayed when another fails to commit to or keep agreements.

What is an agreement?