Duke Offers Online Tool to Help Organizations Measure Work Culture
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Durham, NC -- The Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University is making available online a free tool that can help organizations gauge the ethical quality of their work environments.
The tool, called “Measure Up,” is available at www.dukeethics.org/measureup.
Designed and honed by Duke researchers, the tool helps employees and managers understand the strengths and weaknesses of their ethical culture and generate specific ideas about how to improve it. This can lead to greater productivity, effectiveness and long-term sustainability. Studies have shown that highly ethical organizations have greater employee commitment and retention.
Measure Up and the principles that inform it have been tested and used over the past five years in a variety of business settings.
“We believe this assessment tool will provide employees and managers with a clear snapshot of their ethical culture as well as concrete suggestions to strengthen it,” said Wayne Norman, a professor of ethics in the Kenan Institute for Ethics and Department of Philosophy at Duke. “The Institute is pleased to contribute to the national conversation about business ethics based on the expertise we’ve gained over the last five years.”
Measure Up provides a clear way to understand workplace culture by breaking down ethics into five categories: accountability, transparency, candor, commitment and compassion. The assessment will reveal what an organization does well and identify some roadblocks that may be hindering performance.
“The Kenan Institute for Ethics is a ‘think and do’ tank,” Norman said. “Making our research accessible to the larger community is one of the ways we contribute to greater public awareness and dialogue about important topics such as workplace culture.”
