Ethical Climate in Organisational Behavior

ETHICAL CLIMATE IN ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR:

ETHICAL CLIMATE:

An ethical climate is crucial for nurturing innovation, entrepreneurship and forsign investment in today's global and competitive business environment. The creation of this ethical climate requires comprehensive and relevant anticorruption policies and procedures.

Of course, a country's citizen as well as political and business leaders should attempt to report cases of bribery and not tolerate it in order to have a culture where people from around the world would want to come for pleasure, business and investment opportunities.

There have been many authors and researchers who have studied ethics and the unethical behavior of managers and students in academia, as they are concerned about "copy catting" and the deleterious influence of inappropriate behaviors by managers and senior officers of major firms (Mujtaba et al. 2009; Cavico and Mujtaba 2009; Clark 2008; Crary 2008; Mcgill 2008; Desplaces et al.2007; Gao 2004; Klein et al. 2007; Lawson 2004; Cherry et al. 2003; Nonis and Swift 2001; Ridley and Husband 1998; and others). Perhaps it is greed that influences people to behave unethically; or it could be a person's education, age, or lack of management experience that leads one to make ethical lapses in judgement.

It should be noted that Islam is the dominant religion in Pakistan, and it places a great emphasis on justice, harmony, and generosity in the work place ( Ali and Amirshahi 2002). From an Islamic perspective, the faith and belief in God will produce greater acceptance, tolerance, willingness and sacrifices to carry out a job in an ethical and fair manner (Barham et al. 2009).

Studies from transparency international in their 2009 global corruption barometer (Transparency international 2010) do not rate Pakistan very high on the Enforcement and practices of ethical standards. As a matter of fact, several of their neighbors are also rated very high on corruption, with scores of 2.4, 1.8 and 1.3 for Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan respectively, these three neighbors are basically perceived by the world as having a highly corrupt public sector. In order to increase foreign investments in this region, Afghan, Pakistan, and Iranian leaders must work hard to weed out the presence of Bribery and unethical behaviors in each country.

Moral development is the growth of a person's ability to distinguish right from wrong, and it refers to progressive and continuous changes from the beginning of life until the end ( Mujtaba et al). Moral development occurs through the process ofgrowth and socialization during one's formal and informal education and by gaining management experience. A key research question might be to see which demographic variables make a difference in the ethical decision making of Pakistani respondents. Consequently, this current research is designed to explore and assess the personal business ethics scores(PBES) of Pakistani respondents. Building on the theory of moral development, the purpose of this study is to determine whether age, education, gender, government work experience, and management experience gained through the maturation continuum or process are related to ethical decision making with the adult working population in Pakistan.

Pakistan is a developing country and it has been a country in the forefront of ethical crossroads in today's challenging workplace. With changing business trends throughout the world, there are drastic changes in the business practices of companies. Since world has globalized, firms are not looking at the local markets rather introducing themselves all over the world. As a result firms are not only competing locally but internationally as well. This changed competitive market/s has changed the ways firms operate. These changing trends have brought importance of some of the ignored or dormant business concerns. Human resource is one of those issues. Now firms consider their human resource as most valuable asset and the sole determinant of competitive advantage directly or indirectly. Now companies