The question of morally-defining a professional or an organizational culture through formal rules and regulations seems to be fashionable these days. Yet, could morals or ethics be implemented or ensured through a simple codification?

Many corporations today produce charters and codes (ethical, deontological, professional, etc.) and sometimes forget to face the challenges of diffusion, implementation and compliance. While doing this may have certain upsides in terms of communication to and reassurance of stakeholders (shareholders, media, politicians, activists), their efficiency is far from self-evident. This encourages us to ask: is this tendency itself problematic? Are codes of ethics enough to ensure ethical behaviours?

Wanting to institute an ethical culture or moral behaviours appears noble. Indeed, it allows assurance to a community that some principles and values are underlined, recognized and practiced. Business ethics is often expressed through rules and regulations that encourage some behaviour and condemn others. If this process can sometimes be simplistic – ambivalent toward the diversity of potential behaviours and ambiguous regarding interpretations related to implementation – it could very well be necessary in a period of time when businesses, financial markets and politicians appear to be less and less trusted by the public.

However, there is a problem here, which has been identified by Hugh Willmott in his chapter in the remarkable book titled Business Ethics and Continental Philosophy (Painter-Morland & Ten Boss, 2011, Cambridge University Press). Namely, during this project of formalization, one tends to forget the importance of individual and subjective interpretations of the elements being communicated. Establishing a code does not generate or ensure adherence, nor compliance. And backing it with sanctions (positive or negative) would only make it a law, and not a cultural value. Moreover, formalizing these codes and decrees could even weaken our ability to be ethical. In particular, if compliance is the result, instead of individual processes of arbitration and deliberation, then morals (dichotomy-based distinctions between right and wrong) take the place of ethics (ability to evaluate the consequences of our actions and take responsibility).

According to Michel Foucault, an ethical subject can only emerge through the experience of his or her own freedom (L’Herméneutique du sujet, 2001, Seuil). One’s accountability cannot be discharged in an environment where possibilities are closed or saturated by normative requirements that are produced by rules, regulations, laws and decrees. The obligation of obedience and compliance to codes of ethics, and the declaration of principles, blocks the development of an ability to face responsibilities for our actions and their consequences. We are instead invited to obey and limit the gap between our actions and a formal rule. From a Foucaldian point of view, enforcing a purely formal approach to ethical culture therefore bears the risk of paradoxically increasing the ethical deficit and resulting in a lack of accountability.

Yet, this does not mean that formal codes are useless or counter-productive. But they do raise issue regarding their communication, understanding and diffusion. Moralizing cannot only be achieved through the formalization of a code; an ethical culture cannot be dictated. One should remember that, long before the scandal, Enron used to produce multiple declarations of values and all kind of documents – including a 64-pages code of ethics – in which it presented its principles of transparency, honesty and respect for their clients. A decree does not an ethics build.