OPINION
S.M. Talib Rizvi
Corporate lies
by some key factors. Individuals, at all levels of the hierarchy, do not want to expose their inadequacies and want to give the impression that they are competent. Individuals want to ensure that they maintain a positive image in the minds of their co-workers “A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” and this often results in them hiding their errors through dubious - Terry Pratchett means. Moreover, competition between employees may result in situations where individuals place greater emphasis on their own rganizations have to constantly deal with a myrcareer progress at the expense of the organization. This leads to iad of problems and challenges that inhibit their individuals often engaging in subtle lies to either undercut their potential to grow. Issues such as lack of vision, fellow employees or misrepresent the true scale of their contriflawed business strategy and poor customer serbutions. Additionally, certain employees are afraid of triggering vice have led to the fall of several organizations conflicts and upsetting others. Their emotional attachment to a throughout history. particular project may lead them to lie to others in order to avoid Whilst it is true that organizations may suffer from differcausing them disappointment if the project is not going well. ent problems due to their unique set of circumstances, there are Despite these factors having a strong influence on individuals to certain issues that are almost universal across various corporaengage in corporate lies, organizations are wary of the destructive tions in different industries. It is rare to find any organization impact that it may have on the organization at multiple levels and that does not suffer from ‘corporate lies’. want to take substantial measures to effectively handle this issue. Corporate lies have a dark history of causing chaos in Organizations can explore several avenues to tackle corpoorganizations and serving as the root cause of organizational rate lies. One of the most important elements is the development decline. A quite recent example of a major corporation engaging of a culture of honesty, fairness from the top management that in this practice is that of Volkswagen. It was found that they will trickle down the organization. This is crucial to provide had implemented softwares to misrepresent the contaminating employees with the confidence that being honest will serve as a impact of their engines on the environment in their supposedly key basis for their success in an organization. The emphasis on environment-friendly cars. fairness will ensure that people are rewarded for their work on This led to Volkswagen encountering a significant backlash merit and this would help in creating a positive organizational that forced their CEO to resign and suffering from legal actions culture based on honesty as employees will be incentivized to not that amounted to penalties of $9.5 million. As this example only to work hard to show their value to the organization, but shows, corporate lies have the power to damage the credibility of also to stay away from practices such as corporate lies that may organizations significantly by creating a negative perception in lead to them being viewed negatively. how various stakeholders look at the entity. Another avenue is the presence of strong internal processes Despite this reality, corporate lies occur in organizations on and procedures that tackle such lies firmly. This can be done in a daily basis. The prominence for this practice can be explained different ways such as having a strong policy against corporate lies in the company manual. This can help organizations to create examples out of employees that engage in lies by holding them accountable and ensuring that there is a greater level of transparency within the organization. Employees are also likely to engage in lies, in particular, when The writer is a senior they have to achieve unrealistic goals and deal with extremely tight deadlines. Therefore, it is important that organizations focus on the well-being of employees by managing their professional banker with workload in a better fashion through setting realistic targets that would help to maintain varied experience spanning a healthier workforce that is less likely to engage in unethical behavior. over 25 years Furthemore, organizations can employ various policies to deal with corporate lies. These can vary from providing regular training to employees on corporate ethics to the presence of a compliance culture where employees are regularly informed about the boundaries between right and wrong. Another common tactic is the presence of a well
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COMMENT
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