The ethics culture of a company is revealed by the conduct of those working there, rather than in the documents and appearance of the same. This is a fascinating idea which conceals a different and complex approach to the issue of corporate culture and its ethical and behavioural aspects. 

This is a topic handled effectively by Andrew Leigh, who for some time has analysed management methods in relation to their ethical and cultural repercussions, in his newly published Ethical Leadership: Creating and Sustaining an Ethical Business Culture. The book, as the author himself says, aims at analysing the role of culture and ethics in organisations. In particular it seeks to make the connections between the two concepts accessible and transparent. 

Above all the approximately 200 pages which make up the book also mention the fact that managers of companies have to be enabled responsibly to demonstrate that their policies are ethically correct. For this reason, in the book, after setting out the theories and starting with the question of what “culture” is in actual fact, some important “work” stages are covered. There is talk therefore of systems and procedures, strategies communication and also of training and skills. Leigh then moves from a corporate horizon to a more global one, discussing the future of corporate ethics in a world where connections are increasingly tight and fast and in which the relationships between ethics and profit appear at times to be volatile and fragile. Everything finally closes with a sort of test in order to assess the actual degree of ethics in an organisation and its people. 

Leigh has written an “American” book which is however suitable reading also for European companies. A book which also contains ideas and provocations yet which questions concepts set in stone and discusses the actual substance of corporate ethics? 

Ethical Leadership: Creating and Sustaining an Ethical Business Culture

Andrew Leigh

Kogan Page, 2013