PART I: SHORT RESPONSE Directions: Please answer each of the following questions and provide examples from the text, if applicable. Each response should be at least two paragraphs in length and be written in complete sentences. 1. When and under what conditions can values and norms become so strong that they cause employees to act in unethical ways? An organization’s culture is based off the shared values and beliefs that are shaped by the organization and its managers. It is this culture that dictates the manner in which employees are to conduct themselves within the organization. Therefore, a culture that creates an environment that influences the employees to act unethically will allow them to do so without thinking of the outcome of their …show more content…
This is meant to guide employees’ behavior and promote ethical decision making. However, should an organization fail to address this or have organizational ethics that are too loose or open it can allow for employees to enact their own views and act accordingly whether ethical or not. The responsibility of the human resource department is to govern employment relationship and mitigate people problems. Lack of control over this can lead to many unethical behaviors such as inappropriate relationships in the work place, competitive conflict, and turn over. UPS used to offer full benefits for employees after one month. This resulted in a high turnover rate because individuals that were pregnant would take jobs and use the benefits to pay for the birth and promptly quit creating high turnover rate. Organizational structure has a huge reach on how the culture of an organization is formed. Depending on the structure an organization chooses it can create its own ethical issues. The mechanistic structure, for example, gives a lot of control to managers and very little to the workers. This can result in unfair and unethical treatment of
Instructions: Respond to each question below in complete sentences with at least 150 words. Include at least one example from the reading materials that supports your position in your response.
Businesses use workplace ethics to manage the behavior of the employees. Workplace ethics control management’s moral decisions and keep companies out of any type legal trouble. Some businesses break down their ethics in an official company code of ethics. Employees of companies that have no official code should rely on their personal ethics that they were taught and have learned. Ethics is defined as a moral philosophy or code of morals practiced by a person or group of people. In the workplace, ethics keeps the employers and the employees from doing the wrong thing. So when an employer or employee demonstrates unethical behavior what is the outcome? In December 2015, Fortune listed “The 5 Biggest Corporate Scandals of 2015”. Some
Directions: Answer all of questions below in your own words. Responses should be written in paragraph form with complete, grammatically correct sentences.
*Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper as completely as possible. Keep these questions/answers to use as notes in order to prepare for discussions, quizzes, and tests.
Trevino (1986) believes that the organizational norms are a level of cultural manipulation that guides individual's behavior and dictates what is and is not appropriate which allow individuals to judge others in different situations. As a result, the pressure placed for compliance with ‘ethical' norms of an organization is the manipulation of culture to encourage employees to follow rules reflecting soft-domination in the post-bureaucratic era. (Higgins, Power, & Kohlberg, 1984 cited from Kurtines and Gewirtz, 1987) This is further emphasized by Treviño, Weaver, Gibson & Toffler's (1999) research. It states that employees are willing to report other's misconducts when unethical behavior is displayed rather than their own offenses in order to prevent social segregation. (Treviño, Weaver, Gibson & Toffler, 1999) In contrast, the views and values that are not clear are known to be weaker cultures that tend to exist with introductions of many subcultures that alter the norm for ethical behavior. (Trevino, 1986) Organizational management in the bureaucratic era reveals higher levels of unethical behavior because of the heavy links to the hierarchical structure that are valued. (Chen, Sawyers & Williams, 1997 and Trevino, 1986) Inversely, the post-bureaucratic era has lower levels of unethical behavior due to the management based on trust, empowerment, personal treatment and shared responsibility. (McKenna, Garcia‐Lorenzo & Bridgman, 2010 and Trevino, 1986) Thus, individual behavior is inevitably manipulated through culture. (Chen, Sawyers & Williams,
Leadership, Culture and Management controls were the key organizational factors that contributed to the failure of Enron. Company executives and managers directly impact the ethical direction of a company. When the executives and managers are ethical, employees are more likely to act ethically. When a company lacks committed ethical leadership, as did Enron, ethical standards will not be maintained. Because Enron lacked ethical leadership, it experienced a breakdown in its corporate structure and culture (Gini, 2004). Eventually, the entire company collapsed as a result. Enron created a culture obsessed with the bottom line and not with ethical behavior. The company culture demanded conformity and penalized dissent. Consequently, employees adopted and complied with the culture demanded by the company’s leaders. Once leadership has crossed the line to unethical behavior, unethical acts can become accepted in daily activities and employees have many reason for remaining quiet. The system (a harsher variant of one used at many companies) encouraged cutthroat competition and silenced dissent. Followers were afraid to question unethical and or illegal practices for fear of losing their jobs. Instead, they were rewarded for their unthinking loyalty to their
What direction people are led to depends on what kind of conditioning they stay with. As Trevino & Nelson said, "Most employees are not bad to begin with, but their behavior can easily turn bad if they believe that their boss or their organization expects them to behave unethically or if everyone else appears to be engaging in a particular practice." (2014, p. 15) Therefore, an ethical organization must
Directions: Please answer each of the following questions and provide examples from the text, if applicable. Each response should be at least one paragraph in length and be written in complete sentences.
External social pressures play a very important role in influencing organizational ethics. There tends to be many different stakeholders within any organization, each individual stakeholder has their own agendas, and these agendas will overlap one another. These stakeholders will include the consumers, communities, employees, and its shareholders. An example of this situation would be Enron, who in 2006 were in a scheme whereas they had constructed several off-the-books partnerships. These partnerships were used to hide the massive debts of Enron, which in turn artificially inflated there stock prices (Trevino and Nelson, 2006). This was a shameless attempt to keep current stockholders happy and attract new shareholders. If the world outside Enron had known of this misconception, Enron would have been out of business much faster. This was an unethical attempt to try to keep the business afloat. A perfect example of how an organization may have to do something they normally would not do. The more people with an inside agenda are involved within an organization, the more of a chance these interest will overlap, and trouble will erupt.
As noted above, organizations operating in certain industries tend to behave unethically. Certain industry cultures may predispose organizations to develop cultures that encourage their members to select unethical acts. If an organization's major competitors in an industry are performing well, in part as a result of unethical activities, it becomes difficult for organizational members to choose only unethical actions, and they may regard unethical actions as a standard of industry practice. Such a scenario results in an organizational culture that serves as a strong precipitant to unethical
The issue of ethical behaviour has dominated the political and business landscape over the past decades. The unethical behaviour in the workplace originates from a lack of actions when ethical lapses occur in social media, TV news, and viral videos. The article “Creating an Ethical Culture” seeks to recommend a solution to employee’s unethical behavior and unethical decision making. Since culture provides insights into employees’ behavior, beliefs, and values in the workplace, understanding the relationship between cultural values and employees’ ethical behaviour may offer a roadmap to fostering a strong ethical culture.
The changing nature of the workplace is propelling ethics training to organizational priority. Today 's work force is composed of people who are more diverse than ever in nationality, culture, religion, age, education, and socioeconomic status. These people enter the work force with differing backgrounds, values, goals, and perceptions of acceptable behaviors. This diverse, multicultural population of workers is being asked to work together in a spirit of cooperation and respect for the good of the organization and the public they serve. However, on the job, workers face decisions that have implications for their job security, their salaries, and the success of their employing organizations, decisions that bring pressures for them to protect their own interests, sometimes at the risk of losing their personal and organizational integrity. "There 's more pressure on people in organizations than there ever has been to do more with less and adjust quickly to changes. In response to that pressure,
Every individual is different, and this is as to why there occurs organisational problem. They are different from each of their attitudes, interests and personality, and they must also have different perceptions of ethical standard. This essay will explore this organisational problem, the behaviour of employee within an organisation, specifically when the action is conducted unethically and later the essay will provide with two interventions to resolve this issue for efficiency of the employment organisation. Unethical employee behaviour is a significant problem in an organisation, due to the reason that it could occur from employee’s self-immorality, or the misconducting of the organisation. Thus the question that will simultaneously continue to reflect while exploring the issue is, does an employee take unethical behaviour due to the self-immorality or organisational managing misconduct?
Klebe Treviño, L., & Brown, M. E. (2005). The Role of Leaders in Influencing Unethical Behavior in the Workplace. In L. Klebe Treviño, & M. E. Brown, Managing Organizational Deviance (pp. 69-96). California: Sage Publications.
Ethical culture creates shared values that enhanced the decision making process used by the employees to determine whether their actions are right or wrong.