Project Management Ethics in International Logistics

Raji has over 20 years of PM experience. She helps companies in the United States and Singapore in their strategic planning and overseas startups, and helps Fortune 500 companies in their CSR/BSR projects. She is also an Adjunct Professor teaching PM to PhD and MBA students.

  Ethics   Manufacturing  

Wikipedia defines ethics as the branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. From this definition, I see two underlying pillars for the framework of ethics:

1. First, it is the rule of law that provides the overarching umbrella to determine if actions are ethical or not.
2. The second pillar is the local moral environment and the organization-specific rules on matters pertaining to ethics.

When dealing with program, portfolio and project management, it is the understanding and rationalizing of the second pillar that many struggle with as--at times--it is riddled with situational ambiguities. In international logistics-related project management, we deal with applied ethics or professional ethics that examine ethical principles and morals, or ethical problems that arise in a business environment.

In the world of international logistics, there are three domains that need to be considered:

1. The origin country
2. The destination country
3. The rules of the organizations involved in the project or deliverables

It is always customary that when dealing with ethics, the most stringent laws and the rules among the three will have to be taken as the standard. As logistics is an enabler in the discipline of the supply chain, the business pressure is on …

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