Combining ethics and compliance: A systems psychodynamic inquiry into praxis and outcomes

Abstract

The role of a senior manager responsible for managing ethics and compliance became a standard appointment globally in many larger organisations in an attempt to curb compliance failures (Christina & Fort, 2020). This role emerged in the 1980s after compliance failures resulted in legislative prescriptions to create and fill it. Today, in some organisations, ethics and compliance programmes are run separately, while most organisations tend to coalesce them conceptually and structurally (Compliance & Ethics Leadership Council [CELC], 2013;Majluf & Navarrete, 2017). However, the desirability to combine ethics and compliance has been debated for decades (Majluf & Navarrete, 2017), and remains a contested issue (Constantinescu, 2018;Sharpe, 2019).Ethics and compliance are not incompatible adversaries (Constantinescu, 2018;Paine, 1994). Nonetheless, research consistently indicates that combining ethics and compliance tends to have adverse consequences for ethics (Pérezts & Picard, 2015;Treviño et al., 2014). This raises the question: Why does the combination of ethics and compliance oversight have an unanticipated adverse effect on ethics and yet remain popular? Psychoanalysis-based approaches are increasingly called for as a theoretical framework for studying complex phenomena in behavioural ethics research (Islam, 2020). Systems psychodynamic theory is especially useful to uncover perplexing dynamics in organisational systems (Handy & Rowlands, 2017). By drawing on systems psychodynamic theory, this study enquired into unconscious complexities and drivers that may contribute to the phenomenon of adverse consequences when combining ethics and compliance while the praxis remains attractive.

Influence of Ethical Leadership on Sustainability of Local Non-Governmental Organizations in Rwanda: A Case of PROFEMMES Twese Hamwe

“…It is in this context that for some literatures, ethical culture is much more important than having a code of conduct (Institute of Directors South Africa, 2016;Treviño et al, 2006;De Klerk,2021). For other literatures, compliance and ethics are expected to complement each other (Geddes, 2017;Karpetis, 2018;De Klerk. 2021).…”

“…2021). Finally, De Klerk (2021) concludes by arguing that joining compliance and ethics implies a relation between control to discourage violation of legal obligations and moral self-regulation.…”