Encouraging ethical behavior at work is important for all companies.
Ethical behavior in business is a crucial part of any company's success. A business is ultimately responsible for the actions of its employees, good or bad. Therefore, educating workers on the right ethical behavior is beneficial to the organization and society as a whole.
Common Unethical Behaviors
According to John Schermerhorn's 2008 text, "Management," only a slim majority (55 percent) of people report unethical behavior when they see it. Additionally, the text notes that about half of all workers reported observing unethical behavior in the previous year. Most common unethical behaviors include abusive or intimidating behavior toward employees, followed by lying (either to fellow employees, bosses, customers, vendors or the general public) and misrepresenting the time spent working.
Unethical Influences
There are a number of factors that influence an employee's ethical behavior. A manager's personality and beliefs can cause unethical behavior when he cares only the bottom line. Similarly, if an organization and its overall culture values profit above everything else, it will encourage employees to do anything (including illegal acts) to achieve success.
Ethics Training
A good way to encourage ethical employee behavior is ethics training. Ethics training gives employees the tools they need to identify the ethical dimensions of their decisions and introduces high ethical standards in their everyday lives.
Overseas Challenges
Now that the worldwide economy is more linked than ever before and most large corporations have an overseas presence, new unethical behaviors are surfacing. For example, in many foreign countries, taking and offering bribes is a common practice, yet most Western companies forbid this. Therefore, workers stationed abroad should receive ethics training tailored to specific international ethical issues.
Ethics and Diversity
Cultures can also clash domestically when employees from different backgrounds don't see eye to eye and ethical issues involving the use of racial slurs and stereotyping can occur. However, diversity has a positive influence on companies and, over time, getting to know people from other backgrounds usually erases stereotypes and encourages open-mindedness. Therefore, hiring employees from different backgrounds is well worth any initial trouble in the long run.
