Despoina Alempaki was a participant in the "Leading Integrity" workshop which was organised by Warwick Business School (WBS) on 4 July 2018 at the Shard in London.  The event was a series of information workshops to coordinate future research and action around the challenges related to improving organisational integrity.

Each workshop focused on a different topic, facilitated by Edward Gardiner, Umar Taj and Avri Bilovich from the Behavioural Science Group at WBS. The aim for each workshop was to frame the associated challenges and develop a plan for how we might collaborate on future research and action. The workshop topics were:

09.30 - 11.00: Culture: What are the components of an organisational culture that positively supports ethical behaviour?

11.30 - 13.00: Justifying inappropriate acts: What motivates unethical behaviour and what justifications do people use?

14.00 - 15.30: Technology: How is technology hindering or helping support ethical behaviour in organisations?

16.00 - 17.30: Transparency: How can we balance the need for publicity and privacy in highlighting and addressing unethical behaviours?

About the project: Honesty, trust, transparency, and mutual respect are hallmarks of excellent organisations; and strengthening such organisational integrity is typically a key aim of leaders and other employees, as well as, increasingly, being demanded by the media and the public. Yet a succession of high-profile scandals, ranging from safety failures, corruption, and false accounting to sexual harassment, bullying, discrimination, continue to plague business, charities and the public sector. It is easy to blame individual “bad apples” for problems with organisational integrity. But, more often than not, the incentives, culture and structure in an organisation may be the real culprits. This project aims to challenge, debate, and distil insights from considering how we should understand why businesses exists and how they, and their employees, can flourish.