Introduction
Every industry in the commercial sector has its own ethical standard that must be complied. Ethical provisions maintain an even playing field for all the members of the commercial sector ensuring that the basic norms of exchange are obeyed. It is therefore of paramount importance to every business enterprise to ensure that it maintains a good ethics strategy and program. United Technologies Corporation therefore has an obligation to enforce and maintain a stable and effective ethics compliance program (Desjardins 2008, p 145).
Background
Since its first initiative in 1929, the United Technologies Corporation has grown both in magnitude and size. It has increased its employee and consumer base to a seven multinational unit capacity that runs under a 31 billion dollar budget. This has also acted to increase the managerial and strategic concerns.
The company has employed an ethical compliance program that has been used by all member units across the globe. The ethical strategy has faced several historical and strategic challenges that have put its usefulness and relevance to the test. The defense acquisition scandals of the 1980s were a great challenge to the defense based contracts with the United States government.
The company however made it through the investigations retaining its status as the country largest defense contractor. This was however followed by the Packard commission that led to the defensive industry initiative that sought to regulate the unevenness in the ethics compliance standards.
The constant failure of industrial measures and standards led to the formulation of the first company code of ethics in 1990. This marked the beginning of the review and amendment of the broad ranging code to ensure that it complies with the relevant legal requirements (McClenahen 2003, pp 456).
Problem Statement
The United Technologies Corporation is a multi unit enterprise that has a worldwide departmental collection. The management therefore faces the challenge of establishing and formulating a cross-cultural and cross-national ethical policy that will embrace all the values that are considered paramount in the various countries and cultures in which the company has offices. It also has a large conglomerate employee base of 205,700 employees who are all affected by the company’s ethical policy.
Review
The effectiveness or otherwise of the United Technologies Corporation’s ethics and compliance program depends on how well it serves the interests of the various concerned stakeholders such as the customers employees suppliers shareowners competitors, the community and the outstanding standard of conduct that govern the business transactions and actions in the various jurisdictions.
The existing code of ethics cuts across these interests by providing for individualized provisions that address the responsibility of the company to all these stakeholders. The various interests have therefore been fairly covered as far as mechanism strategy and individual responsibility. The basic framework that is observed by all of the seven units allows each of the units to adjust their ethical provisions to suit the various jurisdictional provisions (Stewart 2005, p 8).
The ethics and compliance program bears specific commitment benchmarks that are applied and observed. They facilitate the transition of the ethical provisions from one business regime to another. This provides for the performance expectations and standards that are applicable and expected form the company.
It also pioneers innovation personal development and social responsibility for the benefit of the business and its proprietors. The standards for internal growth and external relations are clearly provided in the programs provisions. These form the basis of the various alternative strategies that the member units adopt in fulfilling the objects ethics. The strategy and program also provides for the expectations and principle approach that applies to the shareowner value of the company.
Conclusion and recommendations
The United Technologies Corporation has successfully implemented and used the current global ethics and compliance program in its day-to-day activities. The program has suffered jurisdictional challenges that therefore needed to be addressed. The acquisition of the new unit for instance presents a new strategy challenge that needs to be addresses through the formulation of a personalized code and strategy.
References
Desjardins, J. (2008). An Introduction to Business Ethic. London: McGraw-Hill Humanities Social
McClenahen, S. (2003). “UTC’s Master of Principle, Industry Week. ND
Stewart L. (2005). United Technologies Corporation: Running A Global Ethics And Compliance Program. Business Round Table Institute for Corporate Ethics