Business Value: Is Ethics Truly Part of the Equation?

Abstract

While business ethics is discussed in many forums including team meetings, corporate policy statements, it remains unclear whether ethical behavior is truly considered part of the business value chain by leaders. Project, program, and portfolio managers, as the individuals given the responsibility, accountability and authority to execute the business vision, are often at the center of the balancing act in trying to achieve business success while encountering the myriad of complexities and conflicting objectives. Using qualitative methods, the researchers explored how experienced business professionals define the term business value by providing examples in a specific organization. In response to open-ended questions, the researcher concluded that respondents unanimously identified business values associated with ethics or finance despite being asked specifically about ethics. Second, using a word frequency analysis, the researchers determined that a value-focused analysis was incomplete without a discussion of a stakeholder orientation. Here, over 70% of the respondents identified customer or employee as key stakeholder categories, despite not specifically being asked about stakeholders. To the respondents in this study, ethics is clearly part of the value-chain in their organizations.