우리나라 기업의 윤리경영 실천방안

Abstract

‘chaebol’ dominant business environment.

Hence, to operate ethical management effectively, the corporations need to design a well-established program that can be implemented in practice. Also, to enhance the significance of transparency in business operations and management, ethics assessment should be done in a regular basis. To do so, ethics-friendly corporate culture will be necessary for those assessment.

This study introduces a guideline to implement ethical business management for corporations in Korea. Firstly, the system should be specified to enhance the feasibility of ethical management. Secondly, there should be CEO's strong will to practice ethnical management, and there should be a task force who supports ethical issues and business operations. Lastly, corporate cultures and business environment should facilitate sustainable business ethics to be implemented.

Consequently, for ethical management to be established and used effectively in domestic corporations, the improvement programs must be formed as follows:

(1) Establishment of strategy and vision for ethical management systems by the CEO

(2) Establishment of a sound corporate governance

(3) Construction of effective general principles of ethics and ethical guide

(4) Construction of organization for systematic ethical management

(5) Operating supervisory systems for ethical management

(6) Operating educational programs for ethical management

(7) Building communication channel for ethical management

(8) Operating protection system for reporter on offense

To conclude, this study is aimed to provide a useful guideline to achieve the goal of ethical management. However, the scope of this study has caused several limitations because this study is not based on instrumental analysis. Yet, it gives perspectives for further research that empirical analysis may cover these limitations in the future.

dilemma between corporate social responsibilities and profit maximization

lack of ethical evaluation standards

absence of assessment of ethical performance of organization

the defective and insufficient system settlement

The concept of ethical management is that individual firms should take wider responsibilities of the society than just maximize their own profits. Ethical management has become more important in the sense that it contributes to companies’ maintaining a sustainable growth by accomplishing not only economic goals of business but living up to ethical expectations imposed by society.

Business ethics is one of the principles and values companies use to manage their business activities. And the ethical attitudes that a company has can affect its performance, productivity and reputation. In addition, ethical management is closely related to risk management that helps reduce possible risks in advance. Consequently, the companies with well-established practice of business ethics become more reliable and desirable in the long run. Thus more profits will be expected.

Based on the notion of business ethics, many companies have become well aware of creating values for their stakeholders through long-term relationships with them. As such, they formulate various programs and services to demonstrate and reinforce their commitment to ethical management and ethical practices.

Especially, ethics management is a rapidly evolving trend for many international organizations around the world. Likewise corporations in Korea also make every effort to follow this new trend of anti-corruption initiatives.

Under the circumstances, the purpose of this study is to provide the action plan that enhances business ethics. In order to achieve this purpose, this study analyzed ethical management of eight corporations where business ethics are relatively successfully established, including Posco, Hyundai Heavy Industries, SKhynix, LG Uplus, Shinsegae, Hanjin Shipping, SKtelecom, and KYOBO Life Insurance.

However, despite the relatively successful introduction of ethical management in those corporations in Korea, this study also revealed that those companies are still in the early stage of introduction of ethical management, thus its practices are not fully implemented yet.

Specifically, several factors are indicated as the causes of possible difficulties in implementing ethical management in the companies