Abstract:
The Namibian Governance Code was implemented in 2014 and
calls for organisations to manage ethics effectively. Although
this Code, as well as legislature, requires ethical behaviour in
the workplace, limited research in the Namibian context exists.
Firstly, this study proposes an ethics framework that can be
used by management to build an ethical culture and also assist
internal auditors to assess the effectiveness of an organisation’s
ethical culture. Secondly, data was collected from managers
and senior internal auditors in the financial services industry
in Namibia to determine their views of the proposed ethics
framework. Management agreed that there is a lack of guidance
on ethics management and that such a framework could
contribute to building an ethical organisational culture. Internal
auditors agreed that the framework could assist the Internal
Audit Function (IAF) in assessing ethics. However, it appears
that the formal assessment of ethics in Namibia is limited
to an assessment of the codes of conduct only. Furthermore,
there appears to be a lack of reporting on ethics performance
to stakeholders, primarily because participants’ organisations
have not implemented integrated reporting practices.
