The Ethical Challenge: An Italian Way Through Organisational Models and Theories

Corruption and fraud against public administration in Italy are endemic. Hence, Italy has started to react to this situation with a strong push towards prevention and improved transparency and ethics in public management through the issue of Legislative Decree no. 231 in 2001, whereby the Government was to define a penalties system for the administrative liability of bodies in compliance with obligations set out by a number of important international acts and conventions. The company body may be exempted from liability if it can prove it has adopted and effectively implemented an organisational, management and control model designed to prevent the committed crimes. It is here that an important problem arises: the Decree does not explain the managerial and organisational models in detail. This raises a question as to how rhetorical or real compliance is pursuant to Decree 231, since this kind of compliance implies a technical intervention that can become both ambiguous and sometimes dubious. To better understand this phenomenon, it becomes important to apply the institutional theory framework presented in the first chapter, to describing a process whereby the symbolic value of something like the organisational model ultimately supplants its technical value. In conclusion, we consider the interplay between compliance and ethics and suggest that it is not optimal to merely establish and enforce the rules. Continuous effort is needed to incorporate ethics into business and into all daily decision making and work practices for all employees. Without this effort, the temptation to create a structure which is just symbolic is both attractive and easy for management, especially if it means complying with the law without necessarily making significant changes in behaviour.