Managing Workplace Ethics - Essay Example

Ethics Introduction This essay deals with the content analysis of three different articles based on the concept of workplace ethics. Conceptual analysis has been adopted and implemented in this study in order to analyze the contents of three different provided articles based on the concept of workplace ethics. Discussion The article “Ethics in the Workplace” determined that how honesty in the workplace enhances good business and corporate ethics. The author has used the word “Honest” 18 times. This article shows that people within the workplace needs to be honest in the workplace in order to maintain workplace ethics (Asacker, 2004). Author Tom Asacker discussed that honesty used to strengthen teambuilding within the workplace. In addition to this, it improves employee morale, workplace innovation and productivity. It is important for the leaders to adopt honesty and integrity in team building process. It will help the employees to have an effective trust on the leader which can guide them to the organizational success. It is quite essential to gain knowledge about honesty before implementing it in the workplace ethics. The author stated that first of all it is important to define honesty in define honesty. Then practice or development is a useful step in teaching honesty. It is important for a leader to help a people to communicate in an open, complete and straight manner. It is true that each and every individual within a workplace expects to receive or hear truth from colleagues and top management level. Ethics in the workplace in an organization generally starts with the traditional concept of honesty that helps to foster team building, innovation and productivity. The second article “Managing Workplace Ethics Can Generate Competitive Advantage” is based on how several codes of ethics help an organization to improve the efficiency of workforce and gain competitive advantages. Authors Michael Alford and mark Bebensee used the word ethics codes in 5 times, codes of ethics in 12 times and competitive advantages in 2 times. According to the authors, it is highly important for the organizations to understand the significance and role of code of ethics or ethics codes in the workplace (Alford & Bebensee, 2010). It improves organizational behavior. In addition to this, it helps the employees to understand their responsibility and job role according to the business or corporate goals. Effective strong codes of ethics used to help the organization to improve the communication level between the employees and top level management in an organization. Several organizations focus on CSR practices in order to manage the ethics process. It helps an organization in several ways. First of all, it helps to increase employee loyalty and overall business performance of an organization. In addition to this, it helps to maintain effective relationship with several external and internal stakeholders of the organization. Community, vendors, employees and customers are considered as important stakeholders of an organization. Maintain effective business ethics helps the organizations to strengthen these relationships. Honesty, integrity, respect, citizenship and responsibility are the suggested outlines for codes of ethics. Organizations need to consider these ethics codes to gain effective competitive advantages. In the article, “A Model of Business Ethics”, Svensson and Wood have tried to provide an ideal framework for the way in which business ethics should be conducted in a company. In the context of the article, word ‘model’ which means an ideal situation or environment has been used in the text almost 50 times. Therefore it is the correct or appropriate framework which the people inside or outside the organization would like to perceive the company as. In different parts of the text the word model has been used. The authors have repeatedly used the words in order to establish the fact that there is a need to have an appropriate model that would guide the people of an organization into the ideal way of ethical practices. In this regard the perception of the people towards the models, the expectations and the evaluation of the people about the organization are important aspects of the text. The word expectation has occurred in the text for about 28 times which means that the anticipation or prospect of the model from the point of view of the people has been analyzed. The other frequently used words are perception which occurs more than 10 times and evaluations which occurs more than 5 times. This implies that the authors have tried to establish the fact behind the success of an ideal model, the thoughts and lookout of the employees and the other stakeholders concerned are significant. Authors have tried to make a link between these components of business ethics as well as the other smaller parts which includes the expectation from the society as a whole, the perception of the larger society about the way the business conducts the activities from a moral and ethical point of view. Thus the article tries to provide for a conceptual framework for the standards that every business should meet. Svensson and Wood are of the opinion that there is no standard framework that has been formed by any authors in previous literatures (Svensson and Wood, 2008). Hence this article is an attempt to provide such a framework for the organization. The word model has not only used as an ideology or set up in the text, but also to identify an ideal person who would be a representative for all the people. The role model interpretation has also been used by the author to mean that the entrepreneurs with their actions and behavior would let the followers understand what would be the ideal way to conduct a business. The formulation of the model has been done with the help of the different elements of the business like the regulations that are imposed by the government, the various kinds of relationships like with the stakeholders, the leaders, the competitors, the employees and the societal forces as a whole. The expectation of these stakeholders and other entities have been given a lot of importance through the text which can be understood from the frequency of occurrence of the word “expect” or “expectation”. There is therefore a very important link with the expectation of the people about the ideal and how the people perceive the ideal ethical workplace to be. Conclusion From the analysis of the three articles as presented above it is evident that there is a major link between the standards or the models of ethics and the codes of conduct that would govern the model. Honesty would be a key element of such code and it would have to be integrated in the entire business model of workplace ethics. The usage of the words like perception, expectations and evaluation in the third article testifies the fact the employees, stakeholders as well as the leaders of the business are important. Honesty on the other hand is also a human behavioral aspect which has been touched upon by the first article. Thus there should be an ideal code of conduct that every business should lay out for the employees which is upheld by the second article. The main words or the codes of the articles and their usages throughout the texts have been analyzed in the essay which has enlightened the readers about the points or the arguments that the different authors have put forward in order to establish their positions in the articles. However, the idyllic workplace ethics and the process to achieve it was the common thread of concord for all the authors. References Alford, M. J. and Bebensee, A. M. (2010). “Managing Workplace Ethics Can Generate Competitive Advantage”. Journal of Business and Economics Research, 8(1), 87-92. Asacker, T. (2004). “Ethics in the Workplace; The Best Strategy: Start with Honesty with Others”. Business Mexico, 14(11), 40-41. Svensson, G. and Wood, G. (2008). “A Model of Business Ethics.” Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 77: 303–322. Read More