Question

Discuss what you see as the role of ethics as it pertains to management and managers. Does management, in your view, help shape the values and ethics of an organization? Is employee behavior, ethical or not, a by-product of the organization's ethical climate? What ideally is the manager's role in helping to create and maintain organizational integrity?

Using your professional experience as a backdrop, provide examples of managers who have demonstrated ethical behavior (or not) and discuss how this affected the organization, the employees, etc.

Answer 1

The each organization has its vision and mission statement that act as the guiding light for the organizations when they operate in the business environment. In this regard, the business ethics and corporate government is the one important aspect of the strategic initiatives, pertained to realize the vision and mission of the organization. Though, it requires strong management commitment and willingness as a mandatory criteria for the organization to let ethics succeed and create long term value for the organization as well as its customers. So, ethical conduct and ethical policies are driven by the management and managers who take initiatives to implement it. A value based strong organizational culture, regular training of the employees upon the ethical conduct and guidelines, promotion of whistle-blower policy as well as constituting ethical conduct, an important metric of performance appraisal   are the results of management commitment and action plan. It drives and encourages the employees to show ethics in their behavior and conduct inside the organization and when they interact with the customers and other players with the external environment. So, there is always an impact of the management and manger’s approach upon their employees. The employees respond the same way as the organization wants them to and set expectations from them.
For example, a sales executive for insurance wants to sell the insurance product, but it is the organization that shapes his conduct. If the organization wants to sell the product by hook or by crook, then there is no ethical guidelines and employee will sell the product that will benefit him and his organization the most. But, the ethical organization will make it mandatory for the executive to create value for the customers and employee will offer the product that is most beneficial to the customer. So, it is the impact of management that drives the conduct of employees.