Will Ethical Behaviour Pay Off Management

Ethical behaviour is acting in ways that are consistent with one' personal values and the commonly held values of the organization and society (Naran 1992).  The Baldridge organization, which evaluates an organization's overall quality, presents an even more detailed definition of ethical behaviour.

Unethical behaviour by employees can affect individuals, work teams, and even the organization (Andrews, 1989).  Organizations thus depend on individuals to act ethically.  One company recognized for its comprehensive efforts to encourage ethical behaviour is General Dynamics.  Several years ago, the company launched a program to integrate its ethical standards into every day business conduct (Wagel, 1987).  It developed a booklet of ethical standards, distributed it to all employees, and undertook a massive training effort to express to all employees the importance of ethical behaviour.  Faith Regional Hospital, located in Norfolk, Nebraska, is also devoted to ethical behaviour.  They have created a code of ethical behaviour, which they share with their employees.

Today's high-intensity business environment makes it more important than ever to have a strong ethics program in place.  In a survey of more than 4,000 employees conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics Resource Centre, one-third of the employees said that they had witnessed ethical misconduct in the past year (Flynn, 1995).

The ethical issues that individuals face at work are complex.  A review of articles appearing in the Wall Street Journal during just one week revealed more than sixty articles dealing with ethical issues in business (Cherrington & Cherrington, 1992).  However, the perception of what constitutes ethical versus unethical behaviour in organizations varies among individuals.

Definitely ethical behaviour in the business environment will certainly pay off in the long run because it involves society where ethics do carrier some values. Ethical behaviour is what all career people should aim to have. Not just the ethical attributes but exceptional behaviour with this regard. This is because to build a career, you must be governed by rules of ethics to safeguard you and others. Ethics purely centre on personal conduct. It involves personal choices that can make or break you in your work place or business. The major importance of having good conduct is to maintain a high level of respect not just for people but for the profession in which you hail from.

There are many things that you can gain from having good behavioural ethics in the workplace.

Benefits

Ethical behaviour in your career will do you so much good. The first thing is that it can grow a business to great heights. This is because doing what you should do will develop a discipline which will propel your work practices to a high level and set a high standard.

It has been seen to promote teamwork among workers. This is because there is great respect placed in fundamental issues in the work place. It also builds confidence which will translate to trust among workers. Trust in your career is one invaluable trait that is able to pave way to progress and great success.

There are some goals we can use for sustainable development. These goals include:

working without fatal accidents 

eliminating occupational diseases

increasing diversity in the workplace

increasing the benefits of mining for local communities

increasing energy efficiency

By working towards these goals, we hope to gain a competitive advantage. By demonstrating a more caring and sustainable approach, the company is able to differentiate itself from rival mining companies. It makes us more likely to be the partner of choice for many governments and communities in the developing world.

It also helps with its position on the stock market. Most long-term investors, such as pension funds that run investments for millions of ordinary people in the UK, believe that it is important for a company to consider social and ethical issues and not just the financial bottom line if a business is to be sustainable. This puts the company in a stronger position. All stakeholders benefit - shareholders, employees, governments, local communities and suppliers.

Ethical behaviour will help businesses to attain better height and is because it does what business should actually do and helps them in developing discipline, which will push, business work practise to a high level and set a high standard. It actually promotes teamwork among worker. And this is because there is great respect place in elementary issues in the work place. Ethical behaviour also build confidence that will translate to trust among worker and they are more motivated towards theirs tasks.

So being an ethical person not only helps us to be a nice human being but also gives a healthy and successful carrier.

Question 2.

Leaders are obligated to set a moral example for organizational members and to determine those organizational activities which may be detrimental to the values of society in general (Aronson, 2001). Leaders exhibit ethical behaviours when they are doing what is morally right, just, and good, and when they help to elevate followers' moral awareness and moral self-actualization. Indeed, ethical leadership encompasses more than the fostering of ethical behaviours. For example, Butcher (1997) pointed out that, "ethical business leadership requires not only investing in the small trees and experimental hybrids that won't yield a thing that in this quarter or the next, but also caring for the soil that allows us to produce such a harvest in the first place" (pp. 5-6). Thus, ethical leaders must create the right conditions and organizational culture (i.e., an "organizational soil") to foster the development of ethical behaviour in associates in ancient China, Confucius pointed out that "gentlemen can convince the world only with their noble ethics."

Ethics is fundamentally concerned with the impact of an individual's action on others. Franken (1973) outlined two of the major theoretical perspectives in the ethics field--which are referred to as teleological and deontological theories. The teleological perspective emphasizes the outcomes or consequences of an action when evaluating whether the act is moral (Helms & Hutchins, 1992). There are various teleological theories in the literature, including ethical egoism, act utilitarianism, and rule utilitarianism.

It is expected that ethical leaders will treat their employees fairly and in an unbiased and impartial manner, i.e., using both distributive and procedural justice to guide their leadership behaviours. Followers' perceptions of being treated fairly should affect both their job attitudes, such as satisfaction and commitment, and organizational outcomes (Dailey & Kirk, 1992; Koh & Boo, 2001). Tansky, Gallagher and Wetzel (1997) also indicated that perceptions of justice and equity influence employees' attitudes about their organizations. For example, a strong set of personal ethical standards (e.g., the virtues of honesty and fairness) should stimulate a higher level of trust and loyalty in an organization.

In the case of ethical egoism, we have suggested that an individual considers an act to be moral or immoral depending on the likelihood that it will achieve personal objectives. An act is ethical for a person only if the results of the act or behaviour are more advantageous to that person than those of the alternatives. For the ethical egoist, the interests of others are only a concern if they help maximize one's own welfare and interests.

In business we had numerous ethical tights spots which some of them are more difficult to understand. We do except business to operate in a very structural way that involve following theirs actives legally ethically and with in certain social standards. Working with social norms we mean that society is there to observe you work and mark business if something doesn't support it.

Ethical leadership behaviour is positively associated with employees' organizational commitment.

The construct of trust has received considerable attention in the organizational sciences literature, in part due to the potential consequences it has for organizational effectiveness and performance. It is proposed that employee trust in leaders will enhance their compliance with organizational rules and laws, increase their zones of indifference, and facilitate the implementation of organizational change (Tyler & Degoey, 1996; Van Zyl & Lazeny, 2002). Employee trust in leaders directly influences their contributions to the organization in terms of performance, intent to remain, and civic virtue behaviour (Robinson, 1996).

Jones and George (1998) argued that there are two types of trust, conditional and unconditional trust. Conditional trust is a state of trust in which both parties are willing to transact with each other, as long as each behaves appropriately and uses a similar interpretive scheme to define the situation. Conditional trust usually is sufficient to facilitate a wide range of social and economic exchanges (Lewicki & Bunker, 1996). Unconditional trust is characterized with the shared values that structure the social situation and become the primary vehicle through which whole individuals experience trust (Jones & George, 1998). Scholarly interest in trust has recognized the multidimensional nature of the construct. Two core aspects of trust relevant to our discussion here focus on a leader's (a) behavioural consistency with his/her words and (b) benevolence toward others. First, most perspectives on trust acknowledge that a leader's words must accurately predict his/her future actions in order to create a necessary, though perhaps not sufficient, condition for the development of trust. Ethical leaders are those who have the moral courage to transform their moral intentions into behaviours despite pressures to do otherwise (May, Chan, Hodges, & Avolio, 2003). Such leaders believe in virtues such as honesty and attempt to practice it on a daily basis in both their personal and work lives. Thus, we expect the behavioral consistency between such leaders' words and actions will be relatively high and that they will be subsequently trusted by their associates.

Second, several scholars have focused their definitions of trust on the notion that an individual believes the person who he/she trusts will behave in a way that is beneficial to the person (i.e., benevolence). For example, Hosmer (1995) synthesized the definitions from previous research and proposed that "trust is the reliance ... on a voluntarily accepted duty on the part of another ... to recognize and protect the rights and interests of all others engaged in a joint endeavour or economic exchange" (p. 393). Similarly, Robinson (1996) defines trust as "one's expectations of beliefs about the likelihood that another's future actions will be beneficial, or at least not detrimental, to one's interest" (p. 576).

The ethical leader is one who does not seek to fulfil his/her own self-interest (psychological egoism) at the expense of others, but who looks after the group's interest at a minimum (utilitarianism). Ideally, such a leader bases his/her behaviours on moral principles that respect the rights of associates and treats them fairly. Ethical leaders involve their employees in decision-making within their firms to enhance the procedural justice and autonomy over their work lives the employees' experience. Furthermore, such involvement facilitates the well-being and potential growth of the employees.

Article name: Will Ethical Behaviour Pay Off Management essay, research paper, dissertation