Promoting ethics in the workplace creates a positive culture for managers and employees, as well as a

Fantastic news! We've Found the answer you've been seeking!

Question:

Promoting ethics in the workplace creates a positive culture for managers and employees, as well as a successful business. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) notes that the stock price growth of the 100 firms with the most ethical cultures outperformed stock market and peer indices by almost 300 percent, based on the most widely used measure of ethical workplace culture.

“The evidence indicates that a positive workplace culture predicts shareholder value by enabling superior value-creation,” according to the SHRM. “The ethics of a firm’s culture plays a significant role in creating and sustaining value.”

Businesses with strong workplace ethics add value to the organization and support an environment where employees feel safe and valued. Leaders can help create an ethical workplace culture that benefits shareholders, the organization and people in the company.

Employee Ethics

The study of business ethics refers to the ethical dimensions of productive organizations and commercial activities, and it applies to the production, distribution, marketing, sale and consumption of goods and services. Misconduct by employees and organizations can include anything from conflicts of interest to violations of company internet policies to falsifying time reports to bribery and illegal political gifts.

“Misconduct happens in every organization,” Patricia Harned, chief executive officer of the Ethics and Compliance Initiative (ECI), told the Center for Association Leadership. “No organization is free from ethics and compliance challenges.”

Harned’s assertion is based on 20 years of results from the ECI’s National Business Ethics Survey of the U.S. Workforce. Highlights of the latest survey include the following statistics.

 More than 40 percent of workers said they had observed on-the-job misconduct that violated their employers’ standards or rules.

 Of those who witnessed misconduct, 63 percent reported what they saw.

 Of those who reported misconduct, 21 percent said they experienced some form of retaliation.

 Sixty percent of misconduct involved someone with managerial authority. Roughly, a quarter of observed misconduct involved senior managers.

Promoting Workplace Ethics

How can managers help create a more ethical workplace culture? Leadership and talent development consultant Steve Nguyen summarizes a list of practices for management to accomplish this goal.

Be a Role Model and Be Visible

Employees look at top managers to understand what behaviour is acceptable. Senior management sets the tone for ethics in the workplace.

Communicate Ethical Expectations

An organizational code of ethics can reduce ethical ambiguities. The code of ethics should state the organization’s primary values and the ethical rules that employees are expected to follow. Managers should remember that a code of ethics is worthless if leaders fail to model ethical behaviours.

Offer Ethics Training

Managers should set up seminars, workshops and similar programs to promote ethics in the workplace. Training sessions reinforce the organization’s standards of conduct, to clarify what practices are and are not permissible, and to address possible ethical dilemmas.

QUESTION 1 (15 Marks) Social networking is a term given to sites and applications that facilitate online social interactions that typically focus on sharing information with other users referred to as “friends”. The most famous of these sites today is Facebook. There are a number of moral values that these sites call into question. There are, of course, privacy issues that abound in the use of social media. Discuss the four policies that a user of social media should follow to ensure proper ethical concern for the other’s privacy.