Leadership Values & Ethics Organizational Assessment
Presenting organizational assessment of TD Bank.
Slide 8 - Compliance with Ethical Requirements
Slide 9 - TD Leadership of Corporate Responsibility
Slide 10 - TD Corporate Responsibility Strategy - Scorecard
Slide 11 - Economic Sustainability
Slide 12 - Social Sustainability
Slide 13 - Environmental Sustainability
Slide 14 - Analysis and Recommendations
Presentation Speaking Notes -
Slide 8 - Compliance with Ethical Behaviour
In terms of the ethical behaviour and compliance with the Code of Conduct, there are two major incidents that got an international exposure.
According to the Sanctions section of the TD Code of Conduct, "TD is committed to complying with economic and trade sanctions imposed against countries, governments, individuals and entities specified by the competent authorities in the jurisdictions where TD operates." Thus, as a reaction on the international economic sanctions against Iran in 2012, TD Bank initiated freezing accounts that were used by Canadian residents to transfer money between these two countries. This step has generated a significant resonance in media and the Iranian-Canadian Community, and has been settled though the voluntatry offering of the $560,204 to be paid by the TD Bank as a potential civil liability violation. This case illustrates possible ethical conflicts, as well as the complexity and ambiguity of the decision-making process.
Another case is related to the Sales Misconduct topic, as outlined in the TD Code of Conduct: "A central component of TD's mission is to be customer focused. Accordingly, whenever employees are servicing customers or providing advice or recommendations, we must deal fairly with our customers. As such, we must not allow our desire to increase our performance results to come before our focus on our customers." (need reference) However, as it has published in several newspapers, some of the bank frontline sales agents have been using an aggressive sales approach in order to achieve their challenging sales targets. In response to the allegations, the TD spokesperson Daria Hill mentioned: "Our expectations are that our employees should never sell a customer a product that doesn't fill a need" (CBC News; Mar 6, 2017) ( @Ryan, more updated info ?) -> this is a good example to bring up here. Let's somehow introduce it here as a test or challenge to ethical behaviour, and Ryan will dive into an anlaysis including this as an example in the final part of the paper.
Slide 9 - TD Leadership of Corporate Responsibility
For creating an organizational environment promoting the techniques oriented around economic, social, and natural environment sustainability the organization needs to develop an Environmental and Social framework that consists of the standards in relation to assessment and management of environmental and social risks and its potential effect over the projects that the bank supports.
Another standard relates to the labors and their working environment in order to emphasize employment opportunities and income creation with regards to poverty reduction and economic growth. This works for the promotion of good worker-management relationships and benefits of the project. Third parameter is resource efficiency and pollution prevention and management recognizing the level of urbanization that is responsible for air, water, and land pollution affecting local, regional, and global level.
The framework must also cater to the health, safety, and security risks and their affect on the associated stakeholders avoiding the impacts on the people who are vulnerable. It should also include financial intermediaries that recognize the potential of the company to access finances managing and monitoring the portfolio risks. In addition to this, the clause of stakeholder engagement and information disclosure strengthens the relation between borrower and project stakeholder for improvement of environmental and social sustainability (World Bank, 2017).
Slide 10 - TD Corporate Responsibility Strategy - Scorecard
TD's Corporate Responsibility Strategy is built on four themes that contribute to TD's overall vision.
Slide 11 - Economic Sustainability
It is believed that the term 'Sustainable Development' should be extended to 'conservation' such that it can be used for managing the human use of biosphere such that it would be able to meet the needs and aspirations of the future generations (Eblen and Eblen, 1994). It was realized that the 'Economic sustainability' can be achieved by growth, development and productivity. The real meaning of this term is the sustainability of the economic system (Hicks, 1939). It focuses more on economic development rather than economic growth which is a qualitative form of growth instead of quantitative.
Slide 12 - Social Sustainability
The term 'Social Sustainability' refers to the social organization that works towards reducing poverty. It builds up the nexus among social conditions and environmental degradation (Ruttan, 1991). It was also made clear that this theory may be supportive to decline in poverty but it will have no role play in environmental decline.
Any organization, either bank, hospitals, community service centers, social health clubs, or sports clubs address certain important aspects that will help achieve them the social sustainability of the organization.
Slide 13 - Environmental Sustainability
It is believed that to achieve 'Environmental Sustainability' it is important to maintain the natural capital of both in the form of inputs or sources and absorbers (sinks) of economic outputs or wastes (Daly, 1973; World Bank, 1986; Pearce and Redclift, 1988; Serageldin, 1993). The overlapping of economic, environmental, and social sustainability has long been identified (Goodland, 1995). It can be perceived that undue emphasis have been given to Environmental sustainability as the development theory has only focused on economic underdevelopment and poverty reduction but ignored the threats that could be posed at the global level.
Thus, TD was the first bank to join the RE100, declaring the commitment to go 100% renewable.
Slide 14 -
- TD Bank has a strong balance of stability, consumer protection, and regulatory compliance.
- TD has a genuine focus on meaningful community engagement, including a broad supporting spectrum of our environment, music, investment in youth, and social equality for a fair and just future.
- That being said, we have two key pieces of analysis and recommendation, for TD Bank to consider for implementation:
1. The first, is from a social responsibility and sustainability perspective.
Based on our analysis, we recommend that TD Bank play a more leading role in the support of financial literacy in our society.
2. The second, is a review of current performance management models, how they impact stakeholders, primarily employees and customers, and how to react when the ethics of such models come under fire.
Attachment:- Assignment File.rar