ORGANIZATION ETHICS

Organization Ethics

Organization Ethics

Introduction

The empirical study examines the relationship between organizational performance and the ethical conduct of managers. Professional managers and college students participated in a management simulation, providing a rich, realistic, yet controllable environment to observe the relationships between ethics and team performance. Hypotheses tested ethical decision making against team financial performance, environmental conditions, team age, and team type.

Ethical problems are inevitable at all levels of a business and a company needs to take ethics seriously by institutionalizing ethics in their organizations. Accordingly, an important segment of corporate America has begun relying on such tools as: statements of corporate values, codes of conduct, ethics workshops, hotlines, even corporate ethics offices and board level ethics committees. Fueled by recent corporate accounting scandals and heightened scrutiny from shareholders and federal regulators, more companies are ramping up ethics training programs for executives and employees. An association of America's top corporate leaders announced plans to launch a business ethics institute as part of a plan to restore public confidence and limit scandals (AFP, 2004). There are many training institutes offering training courses for corporations and companies hiring an ethics specialist into their organization as full-time employees. Ethic codes are critical to the success and integrity of an organization. Respected organizations will suffer damage to their reputation when questions concerning ethical behavior arise. This is due to increased concern about ethical issues by the public. As a result, the company must hold the image that their customer's value and retain their loyalty and respect for the company. The public not expects but demands more from businesses in this era than they did in the past. This is one of the reason formal codes of ethics, developed by many business organizations, and trade associations are popular today.

Discussion

In order to make an ethical decision one must look outside the box of ones own ethical values. To begin to understand the concept of right and wrong we must understand as much as possible different diverse ethic values and treat them as they were equal and just as important as your own ethical values. Because we are different, we can expand each other's reality of ethic values and not be limited by just our own. Once we open our selves up to these new view points we develop a consensus of shared meanings of ethic values and what actions are appropriate for those meanings. Once this has been ...