What does "ensuring" refer to?

Question

Original sentence:
"If ethics and business are to be viewed as inextricably linked, management must play
an important role in this process, ensuring that a company follows an ethical code of
conduct"
(1) [...] management must play an important role in this process and must ensure that a company follows an ethical code of conduct
(2) [...] management must play an important role in this process which ensures that a company follows an ethical code of conduct
Does "ensuring" refer to the management who must ensure that ... (1) or does it refer to the process which needs to ensure that ... (2)?
I know that sentences like: "I see a men who is walking on the road" could be transferred to "I see a men walking on the road". However, I see often this construct above which is not easy to distinguish as an English learner. What is the rule behind it?
Thanks in advance!

jsw29 · Answer

So far as the grammatical structure of the sentence is concerned, there is arguably an ambiguity as to whether the management or the process does the ensuring. In view of there being a comma after process, the most natural reading of the sentence is as something like:

management must play an important role in this process, which consists
in the management's ensuring that a company follows . . . .

It is, however, not very important whether we read the sentence in this way or as something like:

management must play an important role in this process, which
ensures that a company follows . . . .

Even though the two differ grammatically, one would be hard pressed to find any real difference between the ideas they convey. The sentence, in any event, appears to be a piece of managerial rhetoric, which is probably written without the expectation that it would be subjected to careful critical scrutiny.

What does "ensuring" refer to?

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