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ethics and legality in the practice of project management

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fosco frongia Senior project manager| ENTE PATRIMONIALE CHIESA GESU' CRISTO SUG Fino Mornasco, Como, Italy
I was recently involved in a study on ethical behavior and legality in the practice of project management.
Personally I think that the lack of ethic (and the illegal behavior) is connected, in the most part of the cases, with a lack of consideration around the consequences of our action and a lack of long therm perspective.
Have you already addressed the issue and what are your opinion on the theme?.
They are welcome guidance on the literature and any studies already conducted.
thanks for your support
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
I lived in Argentina. But I worked for local and multinational organizations for years (organizations belonging to whole America, Europe (central and west) and Asia). What I saw is that code of ethic is tied to organizational values. Indeed part of the code of ethic is influentiated by local laws and culture but what I saw from 5 years ago is that organizations tried to create a code of ethic as general as possible to be applied at whole organization no matter the business unit location but local laws have prevalence over code of ethic. You can see a lot of examples like Enron outside there.
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
About risk management and ethics I will say: everything we do inside a project have to be considered focused on risk. The problem is we deal with people and people do not take into account the risk no matter their profile (averse, seeking, neutral). It is inherent to the human being. If what Stephan pointed out is because organizations are working around to create a framework focused on all type of business risks where all the rules and policies can be derivated from the framework I agree with him because it is what I am seing (and I am involved to) from the last 5-10 years. But taking some risk management action assigned to things like ethic is hard to do. What I saw, once again, some actions related to ethic are created inside the business and all actions are defined by instantiate the framework as rules and politics so because the framework is create around the risk then all the artifacts you get adhere to manage business risks.
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fosco frongia Senior project manager| ENTE PATRIMONIALE CHIESA GESU' CRISTO SUG Fino Mornasco, Como, Italy
thanks Sergio,
like you, I'm working on international context and my experience is the same you had. Ethic code is "designed" for being general because in this manner is easier to be applied without "constraints" (we can define it like effectiveness?). As observed by you there are some case where is not possible to apply some possible ethic rules because they collide with laws.
the laws prevail over ethic code. But, what about the law is "wrong" or immoral?
what should be our personal behavior and the company attitude?
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fosco frongia Senior project manager| ENTE PATRIMONIALE CHIESA GESU' CRISTO SUG Fino Mornasco, Como, Italy
other time thanks Sergio,
Concerning risk management and ethics I naturally cannot answer fro Sephane. my opinion is that, in the most part of the cases, people act breaking ethical code not because they want act badly but because they didn't analyze all consequences and implication of their behavior. Technically we can talk about poor risk analysis. what do you think?
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
Law is not wrong or immoral. Law is not matter of debate and it is matter of interpretation. Because the second one judge and lawyer exists. No matter what we think as a subject. About breaking ethical code, if you understand the code, then any act for breaking it is unaceptable and it is not matter of analysis.
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fosco frongia Senior project manager| ENTE PATRIMONIALE CHIESA GESU' CRISTO SUG Fino Mornasco, Como, Italy
thanks Sergio,
I see you are focusing the ethical code on understanding it: is it correct? I agree with you, if people understand the code it is difficult they break it (if they have not fraudulent intent). but I thinks we can have other two situations:
1 - people have not a complete understanding of code: a correct and deeply analysis of the situation and the consequences could help them to understand a possible no correct behavior and, perhaps, understand better the same code;
2 - people understand completely the code but in one situation the analysis of the situation was poor: in this case the poor analysis could "cover" some unethical behavior which was not understood or seen.
Concerning immoral laws, I'm sorry but i don't agree with you in the sense that your affirmation is generally valid but there are some cases where this is not: e.g. in the past in Italy we experienced some immoral laws (and in Germany too): the racial laws proclaimed before II world war. They broken the Italian ethical code but they are legal. we had a lot of people helping Jewish people which risked the life for doing it.
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
By definition of law, a law is not matter of debate but it is matter of interpretation. You have to fulfill the law. If you do not fullfil the law for any reason you will be punish and you will be in from of a court and there will be a judge that will decide about your actions. That´s all. You can argue that something is moral or it is not moral but if it is a law you must act in accordance to it. People have full responsability about the laws a goverment or something like that implements in a country or community. I was born in Argentina, my grandparents came here because the second war and I understand what you say. But we need to understand what a law, rule or policy means mainly when you work as business analyst or project manager inside an organizational initiative. Thanks God when we work inside organizations we have the posibility to decide about this type of situations.
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fosco frongia Senior project manager| ENTE PATRIMONIALE CHIESA GESU' CRISTO SUG Fino Mornasco, Como, Italy
I understand your point of you and i agree with. thanks for this very interesting conversation
Fosco
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1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte
Dec 24, 2015 6:03 PM
Sergio Luis Conte
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To you Fosco. I spend my time in this type of things because I learn a lot from all comments.
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dec 24, 2015 4:43 PM
Replying to fosco frongia
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I understand your point of you and i agree with. thanks for this very interesting conversation
Fosco
To you Fosco. I spend my time in this type of things because I learn a lot from all comments.
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Anonymous
it is true
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