Workplace ethics play a crucial role in organisations by fostering a culture of trust. This trust

• enhances employee satisfaction,

• promotes collaboration, and

• strengthens the organisation’s credibility.

Ethics significantly influence the relationship between the organisation’s vision, mission, values, policies, and procedures, ultimately shaping its culture and workforce. Recognising the importance of ethics is essential for building an engaged workforce. Personal values, organisational ethics, and a company’s culture collectively impact the workforce, the workplace environment, and the organisation’s overall success.

As an organisation, have you considered the individual’s personal values alongside the organisation’s values and corporate culture? How do these personal values align or conflict with the organisation’s values, and how does this impact the individual and the organisation’s productivity? Additionally, how do ethical practices contribute to an organisation’s success?

The relationship between personal values, organisational ethics & your organisation’s culture

Ideally, one seeks to work for an organisation that shares personal values and fosters job satisfaction. When personal and organisational values align, this contributes positively to mental and emotional well-being, thereby increasing motivation.

Does your organisation’s culture and ethics, as presented to the outside world, reflect its genuine internal culture and ethics? How is your organisation viewed externally, and does this perception align with its actual functioning (i.e., is the culture and ethics displayed the same as the reality)?

The complexity of the conflicts between personal values, the organisation’s values & ethical codes

Your organisation’s values have a force/influence on your personal values, and all forms of ethical codes (of conduct), whether corporate, personal, or national legislation, keep these in check. Where the ethical code keeping your behaviours in check is legislation, the choices may be somewhat more clear.

How can your business unit promote organisational codes and ethical practices?

Using the word ETHICAL as an acronym, suggest real-life, practical actions/activities that can be utilised in the workplace:

• Ethical behaviour (Recognising & rewarding it):
  • Rewarding employees who follow the ethical guidelines encourages others to do the same.
  • Example: An “Ethics Champion” award for employees with exceptional commitment to company values.
• Training and Education:
  • Regular ethics training to help employees recognise and navigate ethical dilemmas. Regular training on the Organisation’s ethical code helps employees understand the expectations and encourages them to make moral decisions.
  • Example: Offering workshops on ethical decision-making or how to report unethical behaviour and providing real-life case studies. 
• Honesty
  • Be honest
• Integrity/ Incentives for Ethical Behaviour:
  • Recognising employees who consistently uphold the company’s ethical standards.
  • Example: Awards and recognition for employees who demonstrate exemplary ethical practices.
• Communication:
  • Open communication channels (e.g., meetings or anonymous feedback) allow employees to voice concerns about unethical practices.
  • Example: Employees can use an ethics hotline to report suspicious activity without fear of retaliation.
• Awareness
  • Encouraging employees to report unethical behaviour confidentially – Whistleblower Mechanisms.
  • Example: An anonymous hotline for reporting misconduct without fear of retaliation.
• Leadership Role:
  • Leaders must model ethical behaviour by being honest, fair, and responsible. This helps set the tone for the entire organisation.
  • Example: If a manager encourages fairness and transparency, the team will follow suit.
  • Example: CEO-led campaigns to highlight company values and ethics.

Recently, ODI’s Mbali Tshabalala and Angela Newman facilitated an Ethics & Corporate Governance presentation to ODI staff during ODI’s Strategic Workshop that took place on the 27th and 28th of February 2025. The workshop’s objective was to highlight how personal values align or conflict with organisational values, the impact of culture on the business, and how ethical practices help a company thrive. A card game was introduced to reinforce the key concepts of the presentation. It was an energising workshop, and everyone enjoyed participating. To read more about ODI’s recent Strategic Workshop, click here.

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Keys 2 & 15 of the 20 Keys system for continuous improvement, featured very strongly at ODI’s recent strategy meeting held at The African Pride Irene Country Lodge in Gauteng.

ODI’s Chairman – Roland Röhrs, welcomed the ODI team and quoted Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” To read more about Culture’s role in organisations, click here.

The ODI team then focused on Key 2 of the 20 Keys system for continuous improvement, and it is all about Goal Alignment and rationalising the system.

It focuses on having an effective organisation structure, with goal alignment at all levels. Within the structure, the various work groups are organised as “mini-businesses”, or MBs. Each MB is guided by Quality, Cost, Delivery, Safety and Morale performance indicators (QCDSM measures).

They key concepts of Key 2 are:

• Effective organisation structure, with clearly defined responsibilities
• Coaching on employee performance development
• Defining and cascading vision, mission, values, and goals down to all organisation levels
• Implementing mini-businesses
• Aligning top down leadership, and bottom-up participation
• Implementing a management system for the implementation of the 20 Keys

Keep an eye out for part two of this series about Key 15 of the 20 Keys system for continuous improvement at our recent strategy meeting held at The African Pride Irene Country Lodge in Gauteng.

To read more about ODI’s Continuous Operations Improvement System, click here.

ODI’s benchmark system provides a tool to benchmark organisations against international best practices. It describes the steps towards improvement through 5 levels in each Key, with the use of practical, easy to use checksheets and picture based maps.

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In the two previous blogs I explained that:

• Organisational culture is not only a key factor in distinguishing between individual companies, but between entire industries.
• Organisational culture is an important force influencing organisational behavior.

Today, let’s look at

• The different types of organisational culture and
• The formation and maintenance of organisational culture.

Types of Organisational Culture

Each organisation has only a single, uniform culture, one set of shared values, beliefs and expectations – this is rarely the case. Organisations, particularly larger ones, typically have several cultures operating within them.

In general people tend to have more attitudes and values in common with others in their own fields or work units than they do with those in others fields or parts of the organisation. These various groups may be said to have different subcultures, cultures existing within certain parts of the organisation rather than entirely through them.

The Formation and Maintenance of Organisational Culture

Two more important issues to consider about culture are 1) How was it initially created? 2) What keeps it going?

1. How was it initially created?

Why do many individuals within an organisation share basic attitudes, values and expectations? Three main factors contribute to this state of affairs:

• Company Founders. Organisational culture may be traced to the founders of the company. These individuals often possess dynamic personalities, strong values and clear visions of how their organisation should operate. Since they are on the scene first and play a key role in hiring staff, their attitudes and values are readily transmitted to new employees. The result of this is that their views become the accepted ones in the company and persist long after the founder is no longer on the scene.
• Organisational Experience. Organisational culture often develops out of an organisation’s experience with the external environment. Every organisation must find a niche for itself in its industry and in the marketplace. As it struggles to do so in early days, it may find that some values and practices work better than others.
• Internal Interaction. Organisational culture also develops out of contact between groups of individuals within the organisation. To a large extent culture involves shared interpretations of events and actions on the part of organisation members. In short, organisational culture reflects the fact that people assign similar meaning to various events and actions.

2. What keeps it going?

How do employees come to learn about the organisation’s culture? There are several key mechanisms involved, most importantly: symbols, stories, jargon, ceremonies and statements of principles.

• Symbols. Organisations often rely on symbols or material objects that bring meaning beyond their inherent content. An example of this can be impressive buildings to convey strength and significance. Other companies rely on slogans. Symbols are an important vehicle for communicating culture.
• Stories. “In the old days we used to…”. Organisations also transmit information about culture by virtue of stories that are told in them, both formally and informally. Stories illustrate key aspects of an organisation’s culture and telling them can effectively introduce or reaffirm those values to employees. Some of the most effective stories involve recounting critical incidents and important events in shaping the companie’s history.
• Jargon. The special language that defines a culture. Even without telling stories the everyday language used in companies helps sustain culture. Over time, as organisations or departments within them, develop a unique language to describe their work, their terms, although strange to newcomers, serve as a common factor that brings together individuals belonging to a corporate culture or subculture.
• Ceremonies. Special events that commemorate corporate values. Organisations also do a great deal to sustain their cultures by conducting various types of ceremonies. Ceremonies may be seen as celebrations of an organisation’s basic values and assumptions. These ceremonies convey meaning to people inside and outside of the organisation.
• Statement of principles. Defining culture in writing. A fifth way in which culture is transmitted is via direct statements of principle. Some organisations have explicitly written their principles for all to see. This loud and clear enunciation of a company’s code of conduct allows employees to determine whether or not they fit the particular culture.

From all the above it is clear that organisational culture plays an important role in the functioning of the organisation. Organisational culture exerts many effects on individuals and organisational processes, some dramatic and others more subtle. Culture generates strong pressures on people to go along and to think and act in ways consistent to the existing culture. It is this strong element of culture that can assist in making the implementation of the 20 Keys successful in companies. By introducing it in a subtle way, rather strengthening the culture of the company instead of rocking it, success would be achieved sooner rather than later.

Author: Huibie Jones – MD at ODI

To read more about ODI’s Focused Improvement Projects, click here.

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This is the second blog of the 3 part blogs on Organisational Culture.

In the previous blog, I mentioned that organisational culture is not only a key factor in distinguishing between individual companies, but between entire industries.

So let’s look at Culture’s role  in organisations.

From the various cultural values it is clear that culture is an intangible force, with far-reaching consequences. Culture does indeed play several important roles in organisations.

1. An organisation’s culture provides a sense of identity for its members. The more clearly an organisation’s shared perceptions and values are defined, the more strongly people can associate themselves with their organisation’s mission and feel they form a vital part of it.
2. Culture generates a commitment to the organisations’ mission. Sometimes it is difficult for people to think beyond their own interests: How will this affect me? When a strong culture exists, people will feel that they are part of that larger, well-defined whole and involved in the entire organisation’s work. Culture will always remind people of what their organisation is about.
3. Culture serves to clarify and reinforce standards and behaviours. While this is essential for newcomers, it is also beneficial for seasoned veterans. In essence, culture guides employees’ words and deeds, making it clear what they should do or say in a given situation. In this sense it provides stability of behaviour.

By serving these three important roles, it is clear that culture is an important force, influencing behaviour.

Pictured below:  The basic functions of organisational culture.

Keep an eye out for the third and last blog in this series – Different types of organisational cultures.

Author: Huibie Jones – MD at ODI.

To read more about ODI’s e-Learning Qualifications and Learnerships, click here.

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To better understand organisational culture, there are essentially three issues to consider:

1. What is organisational culture?
2. Culture’s role in organisations.
3. Types of organisational cultures.

In this 3-part blog we’ll be discussing each of the above-mentioned issues respectively.

So what is organisational culture?

Organisational culture is something that is unique to each organisation, with its different personalities of people and the organisations in which they work. However, when one considers that entire organisations are often so consistently different from one another, it is clear that there is more involved than simply personalities of employees. In many organisations employees are constantly changing; old ones are frequently leaving and new ones join. Despite these shifts, the organisations themselves change slowly, if at all. It is often the new employees that change rather than the organisation itself. In a sense, organisations have a stable existence of their own, apart from the unique combination of people of which they are made up of, at any given time.

We ask ourselves – where does this stability come from?

The answer to this involves the impact of organisational culture. This culture is a cognitive framework consisting of attitudes, values, behavioural norms as well as expectations shared by organisation members. Once these beliefs are established, expectancies and values tend to be relatively stable. At the root of any organisation’s culture is a set of core characteristics that are collectively valued by members of an organisation. Recent research by Chatman and Jehn has shown that seven elements of organisational culture may be used to describe organisations. These elements are as follows:

1. Innovation – the extent to which people are expected to be creative and generate new ideas.
2. Stability – valuing a stable, predictable, rule-orientated environment.
3. Orientation towards people – being fair, supportive and showing respect for individual’s rights.
4. Results-orientated – the strength of its concern for achieving desired results.
5. Easygoingness – the extent to which the work atmosphere is relaxed and laid back.
6. Attention to detail – concern for being analytical and precise.
7. Collaborative orientation – emphasis on working in teams as opposed to individually.

These different core values will be reflected in the cultures of different organisations. Chatman and Jehn compared 15 companies in four different industries with respect to the seven aspects of culture.  Their results suggest that there were similarities between the cultures of companies within the same industries. Researchers also found connections between cultures and various industry characteristics. In general, company cultures were in keeping with the kind of work they did.

These results suggest that organisational culture is not only a key factor in distinguishing between individual companies, but between entire industries.

Keep an eye out for our next blog about Culture’s role in organisations.

Author: Huibie Jones: MD at ODI

To read more about ODI’s Focused Improvement Projects, click here.

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