Corporate governance and ethics (3)
O tempora! O mores!
Cicero, the Roman statesman, felt the ethos of his day was under siege as early as 43BC, and he quoted O, times! O, the morals to express his dissatisfaction with the state of circumstances.
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What would he have done now when ethics and ethos are unconstrained and our acts inevitably call into question nature's basic existence?
This final section will mostly focus on Robert Solomon's reference, which has exhaustively addressed morality as a subset of ethics. It may be monotonous owing to the abundance of quotes from it, but it will be informative due to the evidence of information it bears on the relationship between morality and ethics.
Interestingly, a reader asked me to “discuss ethos and ethics,” which immediately reminded me of the WAEC question pattern; so, I opted to write a few paragraphs for clarification.
Ethos and ethics
Solomon explained that ethics provides the basic rules of an ethos, but those rules are not limited to that ethos, and that ethics requires a culture in which to be nurtured, but it does not mean that ethics only consists of the rules of that specific culture; rather, morality serves as that set of rules that apply to all culture regardless of customs or tradition.
An ethos, on the other hand, is that core of attitudes, beliefs, and feelings that gives coherence and vitality to a people. Much of ethos resides in the hearts and minds of the people, in what they expect of one another and of themselves, in what they like and dislike, in what they value and disdain, hope and fear.
Proverbs are employed as part of the Ghanaian ethos because they convey the “collective voice” of traditional culture, according to Ansah and Dzregah, who mentioned a Ghanaian ethos such as the setting of “norms and bounds upon women's (sexual) morality and behaviour” utilising proverbs such as
• We marry a woman for her utterances (character) and not for her privates (sexual attractiveness, sex)
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• One beautiful girl cannot be married into two houses at the same time.
• A girlfriend is not attended to like a farm.
No command, obviously, governs this, but our ethics is strongly based on these norms for communal respect.
It must be acknowledged that not all ethos across the country is the same because each tribe has nurtured its own values; thus, a summary of it brings a national ethos with common understanding for all, such as “walking on the pavement is better than walking in the middle of the street,” a national ethos about the relevance of modesty among Ghanaians.
Morality
It is obvious that ethics encompasses a variety of acceptable social and personal practises, ranging from the rules of “common courtesy” to institutions such as churches and traditional courts that govern the work we do, the friends we keep, how we choose a partner, and how we welcome visitors, but Morality is much more specific; a subset of ethical rules that are of particular importance and transcend the boundaries of any particular ethos or situation.
For example, it is immoral to be cruel to children, even if it fits under the category of “training the child in the way he should go.”
According to Solomon, "morality" is more important than “ethics,” citing that if a person refuses to play honest or honour a verbal contract, the person may be considered unreliable or unethical but not immoral, whereas if a person abuses children or poisons their in-laws, that behaviour will be considered “immoral,” indicating the gravity of the violations and also presenting that morality consists of society's most basic and inviolable rules.
Distinction
The difference between ethics and morality; ethics as our entire sense of self and our place in society, and morality as the simple, collective, and most sacred principles in any community; it is not usually followed in everyday conversation.
The thesis is that our understanding of ethics and morality has altered over time in terms of the practises they judge and prescribe. If we look it up in dictionaries, the current definition of the word "morality" includes both the early meaning of “morality” and “ethics” encompassing all human action.
For the purposes of this article, the definition of morality is based on the Cambridge Dictionary definition, which states that morality is a “set of personal or social standards for good or bad behaviour and character.”
Functions
Data show that the general public has a high level of distrust for corporations, thus it is more necessary than ever for today's organisations to establish distinct, practical control plans that are based on the ethical values of truth, rectitude, and sincerity as they perform their operations.
This promotes positive conduct, which leads to long-term corporate success and sustainability. It also assists businesses in gaining higher trust, the subtle but extremely significant social and cultural circulation through which businesses can:
• Obtain support, financing, and favourable public opinion.
• Obtain repeat business
All of these initiatives have the potential to increase a company’s revenue and long-term profitability.
Conveniently, numerous modern organisations are aware of the benefits of ethics in corporate governance and want to operate “ethically” by adhering to governance principles that result in:
• Duty
• Equality
• Transparency
Companies utilise ethically centred corporate plans to follow a set of well-defined ideals and prevent common corporate governance challenges such as misconduct, non-cooperation, and scam.
• The writer is a journalist whose primary interest are minimalism, sustainable business, photography, society and culture, sports and tourism.
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