Developing Responsible Leaders and Employees in a Multinational BioPharmaceutical Company

In a response to demands from various stakeholders and civil society, some companies develop ethics programs consisting of a code of ethics, ethics training and various procedures for reporting unethical conduct. The aim of this article is to contribute with a theoretically founded analysis of how an ethics program is recontextualized as it travels from an ethics office in Denmark into business units in Switzerland and China. Drawing on an ethnographic study within a multinational biopharmaceutical company, we demonstrate how its code of business ethics resembles ideals of empowerment and individual critical thinking that can be found within the Scandinavian socio-cultural context in which the ethics program originated. Further, we show how the way the entire ethics program is communicated through training with a focus on dilemma thinking becomes a liability when introduced into other business units and socio-cultural contexts. We conclude that in order to create sustainable ethics programs and develop responsible global leaders, companies must take into account the sociocultural heritage of the code of ethics they seek to disseminate. Seemingly universal values and preferred behaviors cannot merely be “transferred” within a multinational organization and transformed into responsible business practices without local adaptations

An ethnographic study of business ethics in a multinational biopharmaceutical company

Today’s business world is increasingly globalized and increasingly complex and therefore requires companies to operate across multiple countries, cultures and modes of work. Companies are met with demands from shareholders and civil society to manage their business in a responsible and ethical way, and social media channels will ensure broadcasting of companies who fail to comply with these requests no matter where they operate. Companies are therefore keen to live up to corporate ethical standards and communicate to their environments about their ethical business conduct. Sometimes, such efforts materialize into ‘ethics offices’, which are corporate functions with the responsibility for ‘ethics programs’ that are put in place to ensure ethical conduct within companies. With empirical point of departure in one such ethics program in one company and theoretical point of departure in the concept of ‘Recontextualization’ and ‘Ordinary Ethics’, this study investigates what happens when an ethics program travels to business units abroad and how it is recontextualized within these new national contexts. The study explores business ethics as a practical endeavor within different ‘vocational communities of practice’ in the company and further investigates how the ethics program is interpreted and enacted within these communities. The aim is to contribute to academic communities with a theoretically and empirically founded understanding of ethics as practice and of local interpretations of a business ethics program. The aim is also to contribute with insights for companies who seek to ensure adherence to such ethics programs across complex organizations