Tag Archive for: Speak up culture

Speak-Up and Call-Out Culture

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Speaking up inside an organization can be viewed as a risky exercise of employee voice that, like other prosocial behaviors, is more likely to occur in conditions of safety and security. Companies thrive when potentially useful information…

Why a Basecamp Founder’s Blog Post Blew the Company Up

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Basecamp sought to transcend the messy, fraught political discussions—particularly about racism—that surround all of us with the quick fix of stifling speech on those topics in their chat forums. In 2018, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier…

How to Assess Corporate Culture: A Conversation with Jeff Kaplan

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In this episode of the Compliance Perspectives podcast, host Adam Turteltaub speaks with Ethical Systems Steering Committee member Jeff Kaplan about how corporate culture can influence the effectiveness of a compliance program. They…

Whistleblower: Companies Need to Encourage Speak-Up Culture

Maria Lemos Stein recently interviewed noted consultant Wendy Addison, Founder and Chief Executive of SpeakUp SpeakOut, in The Wall Street Journal. Addison is also known for her personal role as a whistleblower on fraud and corruption in 2000 regarding LeisureNet Ltd., whose joint chief executives were convicted of fraud in one of the biggest corporate scandals in South Africa

Addison promotes a speak up culture as the method by which companies develop an environment where problems are acknowledged and solved transparently, and before a problem becomes widespread. That way, she asserts, companies avoid the fines, reputation loss, and other negatives associated with more public scandal. Further, the person or group reporting the issue does not face internal retribution because speaking up is encouraged at all levels of the organization.

Featured Ethics Scholar for December: Dennis Gentilin

Interview with Dennis Gentilin, Whistleblower, Author and Consultant on Corporate Citizenship

 

What are your main areas of research/work?

Let me begin by stating that I don’t see myself as a scholar (at least not formally). However I do see enormous value in using the findings and tools from the social and behavioral sciences to help address the ethical challenges facing the business world. This is one of the many reasons I am a big advocate of Ethical Systems.

As one would expect given my experience and background (outlined below), my primary area of interest is employee voice and speak up cultures. What my experience showed me is that even the best “formal systems” (rules, regulations, compliance and other such artifacts) have shortcomings. The best (and arguably the only) way to overcome these is to nurture the “human systems” within organizations. A speak up culture is a core component of this latter system.