Innovative ethics officers as drivers of effective ethics programs: An empirical study in the Netherlands

• Author: Sjoerd Hogenbirk,Desirée H. van Dun
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12310

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  Business Ethics, Env & Resp. 2021;30:76–89.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer

1 | INTRODUCTION

In January 2017, Rolls Royce agreed to pay a £671 million fine to the

British, American, and Brazilian authorities because of corruption,

false accounting, and failure to prevent bribery (Skapinker, 2017). In

the Summer of 2018, Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick resigned following

his mishandling of a series of scandals about sexual harassment and

macho culture (Kleinman, 2017). In 2019, the American Federal Trade

Commission imposed a historic $5 billion dollar penalty on Facebook

for violating its customers’ privacy as part of the Cambridge Analytica

scandal (Jaeger, 2019). Over the last 10 years, global CEO dismissals

due to ethical lapses have risen from 3.9% to 5.3% (Per-Ola, DeAnne,

& Rivera, 2017). Unethical behavior at work is not restricted to top

management: According to the Ethics Resource Center (2012), 52%

of the Fortune 500 employees had been ticked off for ethical miscon-

duct. People are increasingly aware that such a reputation damages

and compromises the long-term profit of a firm and stakeholders as

customers will abandon them. Banks et al. (2016) described the elimi-

nation of unethical behavior in organizations as a “grand challenge” for

researchers and practitioners alike.

Often urged by e xternal pressure s, many organizati ons

have installed a n “ethics” program to st imulate ethical be havior

Received: 17 Decem ber 2018 

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  Revised: 27 June 202 0 

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  Accepted: 6 July 202 0

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12310

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Innovative ethics officers as drivers of effective ethics

programs: An empirical study in the Netherlands

Sjoerd Hogenbirk1 | Desirée H. van Dun2

This is an open ac cess article und er the terms of the Crea tive Commons Attr ibution License, w hich permits use , distribution an d reproduction i n any medium,

provided the o riginal work is prop erly cited.

© 2020 The Autho rs. Business Ethi cs: A European Review p ublished by John Wil ey & Sons Ltd

1Partner and Management Consultant,

House of Perf ormance, Utrecht ,

the Netherlands

2Change Management & Organizational

Behaviour Department, Faculty of

Behavioural, Management and Social

Sciences, University of Twente, Enschede,

the Netherlands

Correspondence

Sjoerd Hogenbirk, Partner and Management

Consultant, House of Performance,

Hamburger straat 30, Utrec ht 3512 NS,

the Netherlands.

Email: s.hogenbirk@hofp.nl

Abstract

Ethical misconduct and violations seriously harm individuals and organizations and

lead to massive fines or t he dismissal of employees and CEOs . Many firms have im-

plemented ethics p rograms to prevent unethic al behavior but these are of ten in-

effective and t ake a traditional appro ach. Ethics officers ar e often responsible for

running and developi ng ethics programs, in co llaboration with other d epartments.

They can, therefo re, play a key role in improving ethic s program effecti veness. We

postulate that ethic s officers need to ado pt a more innovative approach i n order to

achieve ethical behav ior among employees and man agers, and that such an innova-

tive approach requi res certain perso nality traits. T his study investigates how et hics

officers’ pers onality traits and innovative work b ehaviors relate to the effectivene ss

of ethics programs a nd normative ethical be havior through an online que stionnaire

conducted among 110 ethics of ficers in large Dutch or ganizations. Struct ural equa-

tions modeling showe d that innovative work behavior me diated the relationship

between ethic s officers’ openness to e xperience and ethics p rogram effective ness

which, in turn, is rel ated to more normative ethic al behavior. Future research must

examine the (par tial) mediation effec ts, including other c haracteristics of e thics of-

ficers in relation to et hics program effec tiveness and ethical behaviors at work , and

replicate the study multi-nationally.