FEEL 2014: Fear is the main cause of unethical behaviour
The use of ethics in business as well as the public sector is one of the biggest challenges in today’s world. In recent years, business ethics and ethical leadership have also become a widely discussed issue in Slovenia where unfortunately ethical standards are yet to be introduced. For a second year in a row, at the Congress Centre in Brdo (near Kranj), the FEEL Conference (Future – Ethical – Effective – Leadership) took place, where the participants shared their opinions to facilitate the introduction of ethical standards in the Slovenian economic, cultural and public environment.
The leader of the conference, Milan Terpin, said that Slovenia is “an ethically impoverished society”, in which we try to find ways to circumvent laws. However, he adds: ”There have been signs of recovery, as we are finding out that we cannot go on without ethics”. Chairman of the movement “Gibanje za pravičnost in razvoj”, Stanislav Pejovnik believes that Slovenes managed to preserve values, but we give little regard to them. Peter Ilgo, a member of the Organizing Committee of the FEEL Conference, is certain that there is a growing need for such communication: ”At this year’s conference, we can see that representatives of different Slovene cohorts and industries, including the banking sector, are present”.
Professor Guido Palazzo from the University of Lausanne, who is developing educational programmes for the development of ethics in the business world, believes that Slovene society in the transition from communism to democracy went from one extreme to the other. He says that in the first system the role of the individual is completely irrelevant, whereas in the second one the individual ”rules the universe”, and this is why none of these systems are good for society. He emphasised that values are the basis of society – in his opinion the Roman Empire existed for a thousand years because of them.
According to Sonja Šmuc, Executive Director of the Managers’ Association, the tendency to deceive is the same everywhere in the world, what differs is to what extent society and environment tolerate it, as ”there are laws and rules of the game to decrease unethical behaviour and corruption”. Teaching Assistant Darija Aleksić from the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana emphasises that the reaction of the society also matters: ”If we don’t talk about unethical behaviour, we agree with it”.
Medeja Lončar from Siemens Slovenia presented mechanisms for the introduction of ethical standards in the Siemens corporation, which due to a corruption scandal in 2006 found its annual profits substantially reduced. After paying a 1.6 billion dollar fine, the Siemens corporation returned to the principle of its founder Werner von Siemens: ”For short-term profit I will not sell the future of my company”.
Tina Drolc, EFnews
Translated by Živa Furlan, EFnews
Photos: Blaž Ferlič
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