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Title: Governance, Ethics and Sustainability

Words: 2000

Name of the Student:

Name of the University:

Campus id:

Professor:

Referencing Style: Harvard

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Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3

Discrimination............................................................................................................................ 3

Exploitation ................................................................................................................................ 4

Corruption .................................................................................................................................. 5

Dishonest and Fraudulent Behaviours ....................................................................................... 7

Whistleblower Protections ......................................................................................................... 7

Enforcement ............................................................................................................................... 8

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 10

Reference List (Harvard) ......................................................................................................... 11

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Introduction
Code of conducts could be described as the rules of outlining religious, social norms and
responsibility with proper practices for an individual within the organization which ultimately
lead to protect business and informs the employee of organization's expectation. In context to
such aspects, the respective unit aims to produce code of conduct for AMP organization
which is financial services company in New Zealand, and Australia facilitated investment and
superannuation products, insurance, banking products and financial advice involving saving
account and home loan (Amp.com.au. 2018). Through such a process, the company should
initiate open communication and expression committed to acting in best interest of its
shareholder, fellow colleagues and customers. Unit specifically would address code of
conduct relevant to the significance of discrimination, corruption, exploitation, fraudulent and
dishonest behaviour, enforcement and whistleblower protection (Keneley 2017).

Discrimination
The discrimination is supposed to be unfair treatment and avoiding behaviour towards an
individual based on their cast, culture, gender, age, race, disability, religion, marital status
and disability. AMP's code of conduct would be committed to acting responsibly and
ethically. Commitment goes beyond simply observing the letter of laws and individual are
expected to represent AMP whether the contractor, board members, employee and leader to
embrace the spirit of code through acting professionally, with integrity and honesty as well
considering customers interest while making the decision. To stood against discrimination in
terms of caste, religion, age, gender, national origin, colour etc, company works as per
regulation determined under Racial Discrimination Act 1975, Age Discrimination Act 2004,
Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and Sex Discrimination Act 1984 by Australian
government as to value and respect differences to create safe working environment (Cotter
2016). Muslim and Asian women that often observed discriminated against in Australian
corporate has been fervid than conflation drawing the attention of most of the corporate
governance businesses to put the emphasis more on encouraging safe and diverse workplace
supporting psychological and physical wellbeing of its people. Discrimination based on age
and bullying by leaders as making jokes and generalisation of culture etc. that has been
evident before in AMP led to breach company’s Workplace Respect Policy and Code, and
disciplinary action is required to take against such circumstances (Remišová et al. 2018).
Company to establish commitment of equal and fair treatment of every staff in the workplace
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and equal employment opportunity for development and selection process are to form.
Employment decisions are to be made based on merit and not over attribute irrelevant to
performance or staffs.
Recommendation
 Educate individuals about discrimination and its impact on the victims faces them
 Encourage communication, relationship and interaction within group of individuals
reduce gap of differences.
 Strict regulations and penalties can be followed over practicing discrimination in the
workplace

Exploitation
Exploitation is termed as an act or practice of taking advantage of an individual’s situation
and circumstances for own advantage. Code of conduct for the protection of individual at
work context or sexual exploitation has been a multi-stakeholder initiative with the mission to
offer awareness, support and tool to financial services providers to prevent same. Selling
investment product through independent and in-house salesmen being AMP’s core business,
industry context made exploitation of financial advice remarkable where the company kept
charging from the customer that stopped receiving services from them. The company has also
observed to have significance within exploitation of its other stakeholder where it has been
unable to provide services to clients it bought. Total of 3100 individual where charged the fee
after AMP fired its adviser from the network (Australian Financial Review. 2018). Dealing
with exploitation by an adequate code of conduct, it would be important for the individual to
know susceptibility of being victim where it might include the certain theoretical explanation
as younger worker much likely to exploit than older where they do not have much experience
and easily be convinced. Exploitation in any form is inappropriate and unacceptable and
within the code of conduct for such boundaries is set informing about labour exploitation
entails to protect them (Wood 2016). It ensures that employees are not trapped in cycle and
organization should have the close track of manipulative individual to break the cycle. The
employee is expected to raise the matter with line manager if one believes experiencing
unlawful stretched working hours, harassment. They are expected not to victimise or
disadvantage anyone resulting making complains. AMP should be clearly against exploitation
at the workplace and do better to protect worker being taken advantages.
Recommendation
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 Enforcement of law and regulations for protecting rights of employees and labours in
workplace
 Creating awareness about symbols of being exploited
 Face to face conversation to discussion issues of individuals being exploited and
acting accordingly

Corruption
Corruption is stated as an illegal or criminal activity of an individual or organisation in form
of dishonesty towards personal benefits. Code of conduct is a critical part of business
operation point the ethically and morally ambiguous situation terms of corruption which
might occur in shadow and current employees with conflict reward and penalties. As per case
study of AMP, it could be observed that organization in the Australian nation has been facing
criminal charges for misdirecting ASIC as for breaching Corporation Act over relating to
practices of charging the fee for no services significant to evidence of corruption (ABC
News. 2018). To efficiently deal with such cases the corruption code of conduct has to apply
to entirely to the workforce that highlight that every form of corruption expressly prohibited,
the employee is to be made familiar with Section 7 of Bribery Act 2010 important to prohibit
legal and moral reasons intended to achieve business adages. AMP organization has to be
committed to conducting its operation and affairs to confirm at it do not engage in or facilities
any corruption form. In the event that an individual believes facing with extortion to
blackmail, the matter requires reporting to CCEH, or appropriate guidance immediately is
given. Code usefulness depends in broad process on whether they are introduced in the
atmosphere of trust where missing of the system which supports staffs to expose unsuitable
conductance, the code would fail to achieve full deter wrongdoings. The company always
endorse the effort to fight corruption allow an employee or higher authority familiar with
anti-corruption principle and remind behaviour for complying such principle negligence of
which might lead them to breach of the code and thus resulting company's financial and legal
consequences. In case of offering financial services and loans, AMP has a responsibility to
inform its customers as well about applicable regulation and laws to maintain the
commitment of code of conduct (Amp.com.au. 2018).
Recommendation
 Clear and proper protocols to be created to dictated correction and panelise the
convict
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 The proper flow of information and open ended interaction for reducing illegal
activities
 Installation of information system and scheduled check ins of any possibilities of
fraud nod corruption
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Dishonest and Fraudulent Behaviours

Dishonest and frequent behaviours are addressed as intentions of individuals for committing
any illegal and criminal activity in workplace for their won benefit and advantage. According
to Comer, (2017), dishonesty and deception damage the reputation and popularity of an
employer. Therefore, this kind of behaviour mainly seems in the organisations due to the
influence of various misconduct in an organisation. The article based on the ongoing
investigation of AMP has provided such live experience and examples in case of such
activities. As opined by Reurink (2018), following a strategic code of conduct is applicable to
any financial service sector in order to gain trust, value and dignity.
Therefore, there can be some specific code of conduct, which might be useful for the
company AMP in order to regain the lost dignity and reputation as well. It can be
recommended as per Ericson et al. (2017), that the company should set goals, in order to meet
the objectives and follow the legal framework for changing the work environment. The
company requires improving the relationship of employees and the Line Managers for
reducing the gap of conflict between the staff that would provide space for consultation and
adjustments on every small issue. On the other hand, as opined by Kerschbamer et al. (2016),
the company might follow a code of conduct, which can at least protect data and maintain the
records of the customers in an appropriate manner for avoiding any misconduct. Moreover,
the organisation is required to have the right procedure for motivating the employees for
producing quality service for customers Reurink (2018). However, these are some suggestive
measures might be helpful for AMP to take a strong initiative for developing a sustainable
relationship with the customers again.
Recommendation
 Face to face sessions about learning situation and circumstance lead individuals to
commit fraud and being dishonest
 Following strict protocols for reducing such illegal activities
 Introducing automated upgrading system for scheduled check and tracking

Whistleblower Protections
Whistleblower is individuals who exposes and provides confidential and official information
to other persons which are tending to be unethical, illegal and against code of conduct.
According to Caillier (2015), protection and security of employees is an integral part of an
organisation based on employment legislation Laws. In order to expose and bring into focus
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on internal issues and conflicts of the employment of private and public sectors,
whistleblowers came into existence at all ages. However, the government launched the
protection Act of those whistleblowers, for national integrity and organisational integrity.
According to Henik (2015), the Whistleblower Act introduced in the year 1989, protects
federal government employees for disclosing the original facts and misconducts committed
by an organisation. In addition, as per SURYANTO (2017), this law is applicable for any
employee who acted truly against any unethical act. The organisation is not permitted to stop
or retaliate back for raising forward such issues.
On the other hand, as per Caillier (2015), it seems public sector employees receive better
protection as whistleblowers compared to private sectors. Therefore, the scandal raising the
issue of premium payment incident of AMP under the microscope of the royal commission
throws an insight deeply upon deduction of premiums from superannuated accounts even
after repeated notifications. As per law, the organisation requires to take some protective
measures to motivating and encouraging those specific employees for continuing the work in
the organisation. Moreover, there should be some severe protection plan which the
organisation required to adopt some better policies to guard any confidential information
about the company against unwanted customers in case of doubts and conflicts. Hence, these
can be beneficial for the organisation to regain back at least some popularity, which has lost
due to the incident.
Recommendation
 Creating polices and regulations acting against any form of whistle blowing activity
 Survey and awareness about impact and effects of whistle blowing on organisation
and employee themselves.
 Appointing corporate representative as liaison to the whistle blower to prevent the
flow of unwanted and confidential information to third part or entity

Enforcement
The process of compelling corporate laws, regulations, obligations and rules of organisation
is termed as enforcement. Based on the study and analysis of employment laws and
regulations, enforcement of any code of conduct is a vital part of an organisation in order to
maintain dignity and legalities. Therefore, it is an ethical concern for an organisation to
maintain reliability for employees as well as for customers. According to Hardy (2016),
codes of conduct are developed and maintained under various circumstances in a business
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organisation. Based on research, enforcing the code of conduct is considered as the code,
which an organisation may implement for upholding it, which makes the members
accountable for the professional conduct's standard. However, Caillier (2015), this
accountability is being considered as the valuable asset both for the members as well as for
the employers. Considering the case of AMP organisation, as the organisation is operating in
the insurance industries, therefore they required in motivating the employees by
implementing the appropriate reward system. Therefore, the organisation requires enforcing
the code of conduct as well as a code of ethics for the perfect rewarding systems. The first
step that the organisation requires to implement is communicating the ethics code by utilising
various methods of communication to communicate to the employees. The organisation also
requires in explaining the code of conducts for the new employees at the time of employee’s
orientation. They also require designing the rewards system for the employees by peers who
will exemplify the code of conduct ethics. It is also important in implementing the workplace
code of conduct in the employee’s performance appraisal.
Recommendation
 Creating norms and sets of applying different enforced laws, regulations in
organisation
 Proper assessment of following rules and regulations required to be conducted
 Internal analysis and investigation on positive and negative affectivity of norms can
be assessed.
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Conclusion
The provided analysis of the case study makes it possible to draw a conclusion regarding the
ethical business perception of the AMP organisation. The success of the business
organisation in any industry is dependent on the company's ability to monitor the acts of
discrimination, exploitation for the preservation of the goodwill of the employees. This was
seen to promote employee satisfaction and the retention within the organisation. The
corruptive business practices in the long term hamper the productivity and the goodwill of the
company as seen in the case of AMP. There should be clear descriptions of the fraudulent and
dishonest behaviour within the organisation under the human resource policies. In case of
reporting such activities, the organisation should provide the employees or the potential
complainee with the freedom and protection against any such discrimination as compliance to
the Whistleblower protection policy.
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Reference List

ABC News. (2018). AMP could face criminal charges for misleading ASIC. [online]
Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-27/asic-fronts-hayne-royal-
commission/9702662 [Accessed 26 Dec. 2018].
Amp.com.au.(2018). [online] Available at:
https://www.amp.com.au/content/dam/amp/digitalhub/common/Documents/global/AMP-
employee-code-of-conduct.pdf [Accessed 26 Dec. 2018].
Australian Financial Review. (2018). Banking royal commission: The remarkable hypocrisy
of AMP. [online] Available at: https://www.afr.com/news/politics/national/banking-royal-
commission-the-remarkable-hypocrisy-of-amp-20180420-h0z14g [Accessed 26 Dec. 2018].
Caillier, J.G., 2015. Transformational leadership and whistle-blowing attitudes: Is this
relationship mediated by organizational commitment and public service motivation?. The
American Review of Public Administration, 45(4),pp.458-475.
Comer,M.J.,2017. Corporatefraud.Routledge.
Cotter, A.M.M., 2016. Culture clash: an international legal perspective on ethnic
discrimination. Routledge.
Ericson, R., Barry, D. and Doyle, A., 2017. private insurance industry. Crime and Security,
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Hardy, M.C., 2016. Drafting an effective, ethical code of conduct for professional societies:
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Henik, E., 2015. Understanding whistle-blowing: a set-theoretic approach. Journal of
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Keneley, M.J., 2017. The breakdown of the workplace ‘family’and the rise of personnel
management within an Australian financial institution 1950–1980. Business History, 59(2),
pp.250-267.
Kerschbamer, R., Neururer, D. and Sutter, M., 2016. Insurance coverage of customers
induces dishonesty of sellers in markets for credence goods. Proceedings of the National
AcademyofSciences, 113(27),pp.7454-7458.
Remišová, A., Lašáková, A. and Kirchmayer, Z., 2018. Influence of Formal Ethics Program
Components on Managerial Ethical Behavior. Journal of Business Ethics, pp.1-16.
Reurink, A., 2018. Financial fraud: a literature review. Journal of Economic Surveys, 32(5),
pp.1292-1325.
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SURYANTO, T., 2017. Cultural Ethics and Consequences in Whistle-Blowing among

ProfessionalAccountants:AnEmpiricalAnalysis. EditorialBoard.
Wood, A., 2016. Unjust exploitation. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 54(S1), pp.92-
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