Ethical Dilemma

“Guys, I don’t understand why people do this!!!” exclaimed one of my colleagues. While we were having coffee, some news channel was breaking news on the latest ISRO scam – “Few thousand crores of taxpayers money vanished into thin air!!!” exclaimed another. As the caffeine was getting absorbed, the discussion was getting more intense…
“Frauds seem to be increasing by the day… we see so many cases even in the corporate world. Couple of years ago, an IT company fired 200 employees on a single day for submitting false bills against reimbursements” quipped a well-informed colleague.
Recent fraud surveys have highlighted that internal fraud has been on an increasing trend – surprisingly so when companies have been rolling fraud control policies, code of conduct, ethics training, et al.
I found this to be a bit strange - when the tone at the top is clear – zero tolerance towards fraud and unethical practices, and there are examples of punitive actions, why do employees still indulge in such practices? I tried digging a bit deeper into the reasons and what I found was even stranger…
The finding: Ethical Dilemma.
Simply put, employees are confused!!! The internal policy employees are expected to follow and the way business is done is lack consistency. This seems to be prevailing even in respected corporate houses who are crusaders for ethics and transparency in business. Few examples of contradictory policies are given below:
Gifts policy:
Employees are expected that they should not accept expensive gifts from vendors, business partners etc. However, come Diwali, the organization sends out expensive gifts to all those who matter – regulators, government officials, customers…
Reimbursements:
Employees are fired for submitting a fudged bill for reimbursement, but when it comes to making “special” payments to acquire business, the company asks the beneficiaries to submit invoices for some “other” services (which were never provided, of course) and payments are made…
Facilitation payments:
Employees are strictly prohibited from accepting bribes – it’s unethical. But when it comes to getting the permits / licenses for company, statutory work done then paying bribes is common – otherwise it will never get done!
On one hand companies are encouraging unethical practices to get business – through their employees, but expect the same employees to follow ethics when it comes to internal business processes. I fail to understand, how employee ethics and company ethics can be contradictory.
Do we have an answer to this Ethical Dilemma??