Sexual Harassment in Organization - Essay Example

In today's world, organisations and workplaces have become extremely diversified and have adopted varied stance s in terms of job processes and the general outlook. What is striking in such a scenario, is the prevalence of organizational or work ethics. In today's workplaces, harassment has become a very repetitive occurrence, with cases being reported every now and then. The various forms of harassment range that come under the purview have increased by the day, with sexual harassment topping the list.

The issue came to the fore-front, in the 1970s and ever since, a number of committees, benches and organisations have come into the picture, to outline the relationship between work ethics and harassment. Sexual harassment as an abuse of power has become front-page news in the U.S. business press. Recently, BusinessWeek detailed the sexual harassment endured by salespeople at the U.S. subsidiary of Astra AB, a major Swedish pharmaceutical firm (Maremont 1996).

This harassment was perpetrated by people at the highest levels of the organization and salespeople who did not comply found life at the firm extremely difficult. The attention to workplace sexual harassment generally focuses on harassment of employees by others within the same firm. [Insights into Sexual Harassment of Salespeople by Customers: The Role of Gender and Customer Power Leslie M, Fine, C. David Shepherd and Susan L. Josephs]When workplaces become diversified and new parameters of work assessment emerge, it is important to maintain workplace ethics.

However, when cases of favourtism and sexual harassment emerge, it certainly goes against what is legally permissive in the ethical nature of actions in workplaces. It becomes difficult when talented individuals are put down, on account of the sexual favours received from other quarters. Besides this, when bosses do harass their subordinates and the like, it goes against moral codes of conduct. Organisational Behaviour is often considered at four different levels.

Individual Behaviour, which deals with the single fundamental unit of the organisation, talks about the individualistic perspective. It revolves around an individual's perceptions, actions, notions, temperament and contribution to the organisation. At a higher plane, we have the Group Dynamics, that involves interactions of a group. It is inclusive of team work and team-bonding, while also delving into the nature of interactions, inter-group interactions, departmentalization and the like.

An organisation can also be demarcated in terms of the diverse processes and the clubbing of groups under processes that are more or less the same. This is precisely the reason why we have various groups coming under one process, say, Marketing or HR, and working in synchronization within the department, and with the other departments as well. The organizational structure is another concrete player, which is characterised by the hierarchal set-up of the