Toward the Bright Side of Organization
The first contribution in this section provides, on a strong empirical foundation, ample and critical reviews on how integrity is defined and enacted through principles, policies, and practices of three organizations. Interestingly enough, all organizations emphasize integrity and rely on it as an integral part of their strategic positioning. This interplay between conceptual clarity and empirical application covers three different local and legal contexts, clarifying the contingency view we apply on integrity. Practical steps taken rely on organizational culture through the establishment of a “giving voice to all” in the system, a proactive stakeholder engagement, a compelling vision, a reasonable resource allocation, the finalization of a realistic action plan with feasible milestones, openness to reality checks, accompanying staff development initiatives, technical support, gaining scale and ensuring consistency in the process, and revisiting the master plan on a continuing basis. This approach thus excels through its comprehensiveness and degree of professionalism.
This section continues by emphasizing the softer elements of integrity management, not primarily viewing it as a legal or compliance challenge only, a mistake frequently done. We explore the link between individual behavior and the influences of organizational culture. Empirically, we move from an Anglo-Saxon region to Africa, more precisely Nigeria in this inductive chapter. Building on three cases, the authors clarify how individual behavior is shaped and in turn determines elements of organizational culture when it comes to lowering or enhancing integrity standards and norms. The authors distil critical enablers and inhibitors when trying to generalize beyond the empirical setup. The good news for leaders emerges that through setting the right tone through caring, empathy, and assistance, they can increase their impact. Through biases, hostility, indifference, and disregard, they have an opposite effect. Leaders thus can and should no longer reject responsibilities and blame others when it comes to explaining defection of subordinates. They lead by example, which is critically discussed in the light of the case studies.
The next contribution dives deep into one of the key challenges when it comes to ensuring organizational integrity. It sheds light on what to do if there are problems. It explores what companies can proactively ensure for future eventualities. “Whistleblowing” represents such a crucial means to overcome issues. Poland is the chosen country set up to provide a strong empirical foundation. This chapter thus focuses on whistleblowing as a tool to fight with irregularities. The author discusses the value of courage as well as the cost of silence in this context. Based on the presented analysis, as well as empirical evidence, the implementation of whistleblowing mechanisms in organizations represents a small step, but one which ought to be taken when creating a formal ethical infrastructure. Organizations actually adopting such an infrastructure should also be open to recommendations on effective mechanisms for a more effective abuse detection mechanism. It becomes obvious though that formal guidelines and a corresponding infrastructure do not jumpstart integrity alone. Only holistic approaches will work, which in turn must be built on understood and optimized individual parts.
A fourth chapter rounds up this first section. It shows how integrity leading and anticorruption actions awareness in management in organizational contexts are core needs for success in a globalized, competitive, and innovative enterprise. Integrity management in organizations challenges us to face new experiences and enables us to develop a pro-integrity and anticorruption organizational philosophy. A pro-integrity, corruption prevention, and eradication managerial organizational position allows entire organizations to transcend the constraints of our past and present experiences and belief systems and to see the world in its organizational complexities, with the goal of building integrity-proof, corruption-resistant, and rejecting corruption, while maintaining free organization, in the future. The organizations that successfully implement pro-integrity and anticorruption management will gain competitive advantages benefiting their owners, shareholders, and all stakeholders including local communities where they operate and function. As such, all four chapters thus contribute essentials parts to our better understanding of what integrity is, how it works, how it can be enhanced as well as why.