Corporate Governance and Ethics – Is it only for the HRs of theorganization?

The common perception among people is this subject is only for HR’s.  The irony is that most MBA’s like us also feel the same. I fail to understand why. Are only HR’s supposed to know about the ethics of the organization.  Heard a lot of people say “my specialization (left to the readers’ discretion to guess.) and ethics don’t go hand in hand and I really don’t need to study this.” 

Now coming to the question of why do we even need a course on governance and ethics ?  Every other day we hear about the Stamfords, the Madoffs, the Enrons and the Satyams of the world that there is an air of mistrust all around in the world.  Had there been a little amount of due diligence on the part of the stake holders of an organization, we wouldn’t have landed up in a soup like what we are in now. That’s where I realize the governance and ethics come in.

 Over to the main issue, is it only for the HR’s? I have a few questions to pose. Why is a CEO held responsible for fraud when unethical practices are reported in an organization if it is only for HR’s ?Who handles the whole organizational governance? The CEO or the HR manager?  Agreed HR managers are equally responsible in building the work culture but it is often built from top to bottom as the values at top percolate in to the bottom levels.  It’s essentially the top leadership which drives the governance and ethics in the organization. As I see it is totally up to individuals to discover the importance of ethics in their lives but people must realize that if they aspire to be top leaders, be it a CEO, CFO or a HR in an organization, they cannot afford to compromise on ethics