Efforts of the Company to Preserve Ethical Culture - Research Paper Example

 Efforts of the Company to Preserve Ethical Culture Introduction Organizational culture is the aspect of shared fundamental assumptions that a team learns in managing their challenges of internal incorporation and external adaptation (Visser & Institute for Corporate Culture Affairs, 2010).This paper is a reflection of my family company in Thailand. The company has many quotes used to communicate to staff and customers that are put on the wall in Buddhism. An example of a quote is ‘Do good, and good things will come to you’. To start the discussion, ethics refers to the principles or rules that direct conduct in a specific culture that is displayed by a certain organization or group. In other words, ethics is a field that focuses on bad and good, moral obligation and duty. From this perspective, the corporate culture promotes unethical or ethical behavior in a company. The corporate culture is a mixture of informal and formal systems, incorporations and procedures. The formal organization culture utilized in the company involves socialization mechanism, structure, reward system, policies, decision-making procedures, and leadership (Ardichvili &Jondle, 2009). The informal culture parts comprise of the company’s rituals and myths, historical anecdotes, language, corporate beliefs, role models and implied behavioral norms. The company in Thailand has ethical cultures that are developed and preserved through a shared element of expectations, customs, values and practices that take over the established conduct in the business. In order to create and maintain ethical culture, the company has policies that are engraved in a code of ethics that are precise, and particular about the anticipated practices and processes. In addition, the policies are well-communicated, comprehended and implemented. Moreover, the company puts in place incentive system that influences the conduct of employees and helps to attain noneconomic goals and economic gains. In the company, the leader and managers have a well-structured set of roles. For instance, the managers are responsible for developing the conduct that is expected from the employees. In addition, the managers emphasize the significance of integrity in the process of making challenging decisions. On the other hand, the leadership knows the pressure points that promote unethical conduct. From this point of view, the leadership creates procedures to recognize and correct the zones where the pressure points exist (Ardichvili &Jondle, 2009). In this particular case, some staff participates in drinking sprees after work that indicated the need for them to relieve stress from work. As a result, a meeting is held once a month to discuss the conduct of employees. It helps in identifying the areas that cause pressure and develop ways of assisting them to stop the behavior and engage in more productive activities. How leaders in the organization influence the ethics culture The role of leadership in organization culture is to develop, change or implement the business culture. The leader of the company in this case being my mother utilizes five strategies to impact the organization’s culture. The strategies include role modeling, attention, design criteria in dismissal and selection, response to crises and giving rewards (Sims & Brinkmann, 2003). From the perspective of attention, my mother who is the leader of the company realized that the staff had the conflict with each other because of their difference in culture. A group of the staff originates from South and others from North hence different behaviors, foods, accent, and attitude. As a way of reacting to this problem, my mother recognized that this conflict was making the organization incur losses that restricted it to attain the set goals. As a result, she reduced the employees’ bonuses and decided to adopt the concept of rewarding where performance is good. On this note, as a way of allocating rewards, she came up with incentives such as paying for a family get-away trip abroad for the employees and their families annually. From the perspective of role modeling, my mother acts as caregiver towards the employees. She is generous and kind that enables her to take care of her employees problems. For example, she helps the staff when in need and takes care of their children. In addition, she is a mentor because she provides knowledge to the staff. What the organization can do different to ensure strong ethical culture For a strong ethical culture in the organization, there is a need for clarity of ethical standards. The clarity of ethical standards has an impact on the unethical conduct by employees and managers. Clarity focuses on how far the ethical standards are comprehensive, and concrete. Clarity is critical because ambiguity and vagueness are likely causes of unethical conduct. It is also paramount to recognize that the ethical challenges that the employees and managers face in the social context is distinct from business surrounding. It is therefore not proper for the staff and managers to depend on their good judgment and moral intuitions. A culture that is precise on what is unethical and ethical conduct is paramount to decrease the possibility of employees behaving in unethical manner unknowingly. A research carried out proves that unethical conduct happens because of the absence of comprehensible normative structure in the company (Kaptein, 2011). From the other hand, the role model behavior of supervisors and management is very important because it influences the ethical culture of an organization. The theory of social learning implies that individuals learn the expected conduct through observing the role model’s behavior. Therefore, supervisors and managers are significant role models in a company. The managers and supervisors are supposed to behave in line with the ethical standard of the company to strengthen the message of adherence the set policies (Kaptein, 2011). In addition, to establish a strong ethical culture in the organization, the employees and managers should be able to behave ethically. It is achieved by making sure there is sufficient information, authority, budgets, time and equipment available to satisfy the ethical responsibility. The strain theory states that individuals who act unethically do it because they are not able to attain their goals in a legal way. Both the managers and employees should make a commitment to behave ethically. It is line with the social bond theory that proposes that persons participate in unethical conduct because they do not have the attachment sensation or are not committed to a particular community. Commitment is of great value because a culture of dissatisfaction, demotivation and mistrust can be a fertile platform for unethical conduct (Kaptein, 2011). Another factor that is crucial in maintaining ethical behavior is visibility of unethical conduct. Visibility is the extent to which the unethical conduct and its results are seen by those responsible to act on it. It involves the subordinates, supervisors, perpetrators, managers and colleagues. Visibility assists in revealing unethical behavior and prevents such occurrences because of the increased chances of being caught (Kaptein, 2011). Last but not least, openness by the employees and managers to talk about ethical issues help to foresee and stop the unethical behavior. The communication theory, indicate that discussion and sharing of issues assist individuals to learn from one another. In addition, communication develops a better comprehension and encourages people to honor agreements. Reinforcement of the ethical conduct plays a major role in ensuring a long lasting the ethical culture. It entails the possibility of employees and managers being punished for acting unethically and being rewarded for the ethical behavior. The reinforcement theory states that a result of a decision in the past has an impact on future decisions. Therefore, rewards will encourage repetition and punishment will prevent such occurrences (Kaptein, 2011). References Ardichvili, A., &Jondle, D. (2009). Integrative literature review: ethical business cultures: a literature review and implications for HRD. Human Resource Development Review, 8(2), 223-244. Kaptein, M. (2011).Understanding unethical behavior by unraveling ethical culture. Human Relations, 64(6), 843-869. Sims, R. R., &Brinkmann, J. (2003). Enron ethics (or: culture matters more than codes). Journal of Business ethics, 45(3), 243-256. Visser, W., & Institute for Corporate Culture Affairs. (2010). 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