How would you, as CEO/CFO of a publicly-traded manufacturing firm, mitigate thepotential for serious corporate damage due to ethical and/or legal issues? Explain

Ethical issues have become an issue of concern for many organizations due to the negative risks
they bring to the organization from a legal, financial and reputational perspective. For publicly-
traded companies, their reputation is an essential factor because it affects the ability of an
organization to raise funds through the capital markets. A negative reputation also affects
investor confidence and, therefore, the value of publicly traded shares and may reduce the value
of the overall organization. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the risk mitigation strategies
that CEOs of publicly traded companies may use to reduce corporate image damage from ethical
and legal issues. The paper also evaluates the processes that the CEOs might integrate into
culture, policy, and procedures to reduce ethical issues.
Public Relations (PR) campaign
A public relations campaign would help the organization limit and manage reputational damage
arising from ethical issues. A public relations campaign can be handled by an organization’s
public relations team or contracted to a third-party professional PR Firm. The PR firm would
help an organization create a message to deliver to the public about their image and commitment
to ethics. The role of the CEO in this would be to provide financial resources for investment in
PR and make decisions about the message that best restores good faith, trust and repairs the
damaged reputation, if any. PR campaigns can be costly to implement in the various
communication avenues available but could offer significant benefits to the organization’s
perception and brand image.
Investing in content optimization
Modern technology helps organizations achieve many goals, and one of the goals is to control
the content that people get when they research the organization’s keywords on search engines
such as Google. As a CEO, I would enlist a content optimization professional to optimize the
organization’s online content such that the search engine results pages (SERPs) return positive
content that helps repair a damaged reputation.
What kind of process would you build into operations, culture, policy, and procedures to
make sure your firm will not experience any ethical or legal issues?
Code of conduct
I would spearhead the development of a code of conduct to affect operations, culture, and policy.
A well-designed code of conduct would encompass relations with the organization’s stakeholders
such as employees, customers, suppliers, investors, and the government. It would model
employee behavior and ensure that a culture of ethics and integrity is cultivated and passed on to
employee generations. As a CEO, I would also be responsible for providing support for the

implementation of the code of conduct, overseeing its periodic reviews, and approving
recommendations on the area of improvements as the scope operations change within the
organization.
Employee training and development
I would also organize employee education and training on legal and ethical issues that fall within
the organization’s operational scope. Education would be ideal for helping the employees acquire
specific knowledge, while training would involve the ways in which the education can be turned
into ethical behavior and decision making. I would direct the human resources department to
ensure that all employees undergo a minimum training period of certain hours on legal and
ethical issues. This would help develop ethically conscious behavior, support the development of
an ethical culture and avoid ethical r