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An Organization's Code of Ethics & Social Responsibility

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A Code of Ethics is a very important part of an organization's Social Responsibility. "Since the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley legislations, any publicly held company is required to create its own code of ethics to deter wrongdoing and to promote ethical behavior".
(Source: http://www.12manage.com/description_code_of_ethics.html).

Search the Internet for the following terms: "Sarbanes Oxley Code of Ethics" to find the SOX definition of a "code of ethics" and the requirements to meet the code.
Search the Internet for three publicly held companies and find their respective "Code of Ethics."

Review the three different codes and write a four to five page paper on the following:
1. What was in each respective code?
2. Is the code adequate to what the Sarbanes Oxley Act was requesting? Justify your answer.
3. If each of these publicly held companies were to conduct business globally, what business or cultural challenges would be best handled by the respective codes?
4. Identify what may be missing in the respective codes that would assist the company in conducting business globally.

Include a reference list. All research to be cited in the body of the document. Reports without citations will not earn as much credit report to contain an abstract, a short introduction, and conclusion in addition to the body of the paper. If a source in reference section, need to cite it in the body of the paper per vice-versa, per APA guidelines.

Objective:
Describe the opportunities and challenges of conducting business in other countries.

Explain how specific elements of an organization's culture can be leveraged by leaders to enhance organizational success.

Define the role of ethics and social responsibility in business.

Recognize situations that present potential ethical and legal issues and develop solutions for those issues.

Please include and cite all references.

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Solution Summary

This solution discusses the three different codes and writes a paper to describe them.

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Code of Ethics in Organizations

Abstract
The paper discusses the Sarbanes Oxley act, code of ethics. This paper describes the code of ethics in three different companies namely John Deere, GSK and The Royce Fund, and also explains whether they are adequate with the requirements of SOX act. The paper also describes how the respective code of ethics helps to handle the business and culture challenges. At the same time, the paper discusses about the codes that should be include in respective codes of the companies to enhance the effectiveness in conducting business globally. It also helps to determine the role of ethics and social responsibility in business.

Introduction
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act includes the section 406 and 407 that provides new requirements regarding code of ethics. Ethics is related to the code of conduct or morals that is related to the act of organizational, professional and religion people. The code of ethics provides standard guidelines for personal behavior. This act includes code of ethics as legal requirements. This code mandated for the organizations to adopt code of ethics for senior financial managers or executive officers (Northrup, 2006). The code of ethics helps to facilitate honest and ethical conduct within the business. An organization may use different code of ethics for different type of officers.
GlaxoSmithKline plc. (GSK)
GSK is one of the most recognized companies in the pharmaceutical industry for its corporate and social responsibility. The corporate citizenship in GSK is in accordance with the highest ethical standards. The code of ethics in GSK ensures the honest and integrates behavior of its staff to protect the organizational image and to enhance the relationship with customers, suppliers, competitors and business partners. The code of ethics in GSK comprises seven policies related to code of conduct, share dealing, political contribution, risk management and legal compliance etc. The code of ethics guideline in GSK provides specific guidelines for all employees (GlaxoSmithKline plc, 2010).
Code of ethics provides fundamental requirements for all the staff members. The code of ethics in GSK provides following guidelines to its management in concern to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act code of ethics -
- The senior management of GSK is responsible to ensure their actions in compliance with business policy.
- Management should be act as role models to ensure compliance with policy.
- Management is also responsible to provide proper training and communication to enhance ethical behavior of staff.
- GSK staff can accept the gifts or entertainment that is ethical and lawful to support the business activities.
- The company will provide travel reimbursement only to the travels that are business related (GSK Code of Conduct, 2008).

Adequacy with requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley Act:
The code of ethics in GSK is in ...

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