Ethics audit – exploring the term through article analysis
Definition of the term
‘Ethics audit’ can be explained as an audit that is performed for adjudging the following of the various codes of conduct, values, and goals of the organization by its members. The ethics audit helps the organization to know the specific goals that it is failing to achieve and the specific values that are being compromised at the various stages of its operation in the social sphere. It includes the adherence to the ethical behavior of the employees and the ethical culture in the organization to preserve integrity in the workplace and associated spheres of the firm (Putri, Adawiyah & Pramuka, 2017).
Summary of an article on ethics audit
The researchers of the current paper have worked to understand the impact that an ethical audit regime has over the sustainability of a global supply chain. The multinational corporations across the world are expanding their programs of ethical audits in order to cut down the risks associated with the poor practices of supplier sourcing. Various regulations by the governments, including the 2012 California Transparency in Supply Chains Act and the 2015 UK Modern Slavery Act, have been enacted to increase the legitimacy of using audits for governing the various environmental standards and labor in the supply chains across the globe. It has been found to be often backed up by a wide array of actors from civil society who champion audits for enhancing corporate accountability. The researchers of the study state that the growth in the rates of adopting audit as a tool for governance is a confusing rhythm if the pieces of evidence on the failure of the auditing approach for the detection of the environmental and labor issues from the past two decades are taken into consideration for global supply chain (LeBaron, Lister & Dauvergne, 2017). For the study, the authors have conducted extensive field research on the growth of traction and legitimacy among the actors of civil society and the government. The ethics audit regime has been found to be protecting the commercial interests of the industry.
Discussion on the topic
If the chosen study is considered from an analytical point of view, it can be stated that the researchers challenge the audit regime characterizations as neutral, technical, and a benign help for governing supply chain. Further, the study also elucidates the embedded nature of the audit regime over the fights of legitimacy against effectiveness in terms of privatizing the global governance in the industries.
It is necessary to mention that the application of the ethics audit regime is not limited to the operations and governance of the supply chain only. It is applicable to every sphere of an organization. The prime objective of an ethics audit is to quantify the behavior of the employees and the organizational culture along with the extent of embedding it into the various processes. Some of the prime parameters that can be considered for evaluation under an ethics audit include the factors of equality, diversity, policies to enact them, job satisfaction of the employees, ethical standards of the organizational processes, and many more (García-Marzá, 2017). At times, it is also used to assess the progress made by the organization in terms of fulfilling the corporate social responsibility that it has undertaken.
It has a few variations in comparison to financial auditing in light of the fact that ethics audit adheres to the values of conduct code within the workplace while the financial audit verifies the adherence of the organization processes to the financial principles. The ethics regime helps the organization to fulfill the objectives from the societal perspective, unlike the perspective of efficient resource utilization in financial auditing.
Reference
García-Marzá, D. (2017). From ethical codes to ethical auditing: An ethical infrastructure for corporate social responsibility communication. El profesional de la información (EPI), 26(2), 268-276.
LeBaron, G., Lister, J., & Dauvergne, P. (2017). Governing global supply chain sustainability through the ethical audit regime. Globalizations, 14(6), 958-975.
Putri, N. K., Adawiyah, W. R., & Pramuka, B. A. (2017). Independence of audit ethical decision making process: a case of Indonesia. DLSU Business & Economics Review, 26(2), 115-124.