Ethical Business Practice and Regulation: A Behavioural and Values-Based Approach to Compliance and Enforcement - Paperback

by Christopher Hodges (Author), Ruth Steinholtz (Author)

This book explains the concepts of Ethical Business Practice (EBP) and Ethical Business Regulation (EBR), a new paradigm in compliance and enforcement based on behavioural science and ethics. EBR provides the basis for an effective relationship between a business and its regulators, resulting in better outcomes for both. EBR is attracting extensive attention from regulators and businesses around the world. The UK Government's 2017 Regulatory Futures Review draws on EBR as the foundation for its policy of 'regulatory self-assurance'. EBR draws on findings from behavioural science, responsive regulation, safety and business and integrity management to create a practical and holistic approach. Examples include the open culture that is essential for civil aviation safety, the Primary Authority agreements between regulators and national businesses, and feedback mechanisms provided by market vigilance systems and sectoral consumer ombudsmen. This book provides an essential blueprint for sustainable business and effective future regulation.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
"Finally, a new paradigm in compliance and regulation that gets to the heart of what truly matters--values-based and ethically-based leadership. In the 21st century who you are, how you behave, and what you stand for are destined to become the new frontiers of competitive advantage. Success in the future will be all about the culture the leaders create.+?
Richard Barrett, Chairman of the Barrett Values Centre and Founder of the Academy for the Advancement of Human Values.

"This book makes an insightful case for business to benefit from being values-driven rather than focussed on short-term profits, and for promoting an open, just culture rather than a blame culture. It also convincingly contends that while business regulators must take closing businesses and deterrence seriously, deterrence can also have counterproductive effects. This is a book rich in lessons about how we can all learn how to build more ethical corporate cultures.+?
John Braithwaite, Australian National University

"In this long overdue, much needed and wonderfully practical book, Christopher Hodges and Ruth Steinholtz have provided a guide for both business practitioners and regulators that lays out the rationale, a mindset and a roadmap for a more realistic, more honest and ultimately more productive working relationship between these two powerful societal players. The book remains remarkably readable and engaging while providing a solid foundation of insights-from both science and real world experience-into the factors that encourage as well as discourage ethical human behavior. The central argument at the book's heart is the simple yet powerful idea that deterrence and adversarialism have not and will not serve to build the trust-based relationships between the public and the private sectors upon which a productive and mutually beneficial functioning of our economy relies-and that cooperation and a mutual learning orientation will. Although their book targets regulators and business practitioners, its lessons provide a critical key for beginning to address the wide-ranging challenges at the heart of our world's current larger spiral of distrust, fear, resentment and retaliation. Hodges and Steinholtz have done us all a great service.+?
Mary C. Gentile PhD, Author of Giving Voice To Values: How To Speak Your Mind When You Know What's Right and Professor of Practice, University of Virginia Darden School of Business

"After every institutional failure, the cry goes up for more ethical behaviour from more ethical individuals. But where are such people to be found? How would you identify them? Where do they come from-and what militates against them? This book sets itself the ambitious goal of analysing what ethical businesses look like and how they behave. It doesn't dodge the hard questions or promise simplistic solutions but dares to look fearle

Author Biography

Christopher Hodges is Professor of Justice Systems and Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford; and Head of the Swiss Re/CMS Research Programme on Civil Justice Systems at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford.