Explain Critically Why Otherwise Ordinary People Behave Unethically in Contemporary Organisational Settings

TOPIC 1: ETHIC

Question1: Explain critically why otherwise ordinary people behave unethically in contemporary organisational settings.

It is difficult to define exactly the meaning of "ethics", and the views of many people about “ethics” are ambiguous. According to Manuel et al., (1987), ethics is pin down as the establishment of standards of right and wrong that recommend what human should do. Thanks to globalization and mass information systems, consumers are now better informed and educated than ever before, they are now more sensitive to ethic issues (environment, exploitation) and managers better educated on ethical issues are significant pressure for ethic.

 However, it is known for a lot of benefits that doing ethical can bring about, these still exist those individuals who willing to acts immorally. In this essay, the author is going to analyze what causes unethical behavior in an organization. According to Haslam, A. & Reicher, S. (2008) combining with the research of Hannah Arendt, there are three causes of unethical behavior in an organization:

First of all, individual differences (personality, level of authoritarianism, social dominance, or some other such individual factor). For example, an experiment calling for people to participate ‘in a psychological study of prison life’, where there is a free choice, not just anyone would elect to put themselves in a ‘prison’ situation and take on a ‘prison’ role. Or in the case of Erichmann (The Banality of Evil case), he is a normal person with a neurological stability but he chose to follow the orders of superiors. Or in another research such as Milgram (Stanley Milgram, 1961), when the volunteers pretending teachers are required to deliver electric shocks of muiderous magnitude to another person who posed as a student. Voltage is increased gradually and reaches the highest is 450V. 65% of participants followed orders of researcher. It demonstrated that even without the forces of a higher authority (as in the case of Erichmann), human makes the decision by themselves whether they should act in unethical or not, based on differences in perception, traits, personality, level of ambition and their virtual ethics.

Secondly is Contexts of crisis and group failure. The author sees a similarly in the research of Hannah Arendt and Phone hacking case, that is unethical actions received support and encouragement from individuals in society, both directly and indirectly. Sean Hoare as a journalist of NoW confirmed that phone hacking was a typical practice at the firm and enhanced by the CEO – Coulson. Now has been the best-selling newspaper in the UK, it means that, a majority of readers who have of indirect motivate journalists continue to perform their tasks – collecting breaking news at any cost. And in the case of Erichmann, he received the consensus from those who have high positions in society and from those individuals who have misconceptions about morality derived from the differences perception. Taking a look in the context of Vietnam, bribery is a completely violation of the law but whether bribery is unethical behavior or not. In fact it is an unethical behavior, but today it becomes a trend or a cultural. A large of people may see it is not a serious problem, bribery make “the thing” is resolved by the way that individual want it to go through with the faster speeds and simpler process. Meanwhile, the rest of society may realize it is not the right thing to follow but they done nothing about it. They conform blindly to what is expected of them as a group member.

Last but not least is leadership. Whatever is going on in the world, however great the crisis, it is still necessary for people to make sense of events, to explain how current difficulties came about and to have a vision of how they resolved. People do great wrong, not because they are unaware of what they are doing but because they consider it to be right.

RECOMMENDATION:

1. Organization:

• Cultural: Supporting moral learning and development, instead of restricting ethics through codes (Kjonstad and Willmott, 1995)

• Leadership

• Structure: Clegg et al, (2011) suggested that changing bureaucracies into more entrepreneurial organizations that are “post-bureaucratic” will shape the ability of members to behave ethically. In principle, making these organizations more flexible will allow their members to exercise more discretion.

2. Individual:

• Individualization of ethics suggests that the individual manager is ultimately responsible for ethical behaviour

• Bauman (1993; 1995) suggested that individual needs to listen to their inner voice or “moral impulse”

TOPIC 2: Bureaucracy

The organization is conceived as a system open to inputs from the environment and that sends outputs to the environment as a result of internal transformation process. The variations (shifts) that occur in organization structure are seen to be a result of environmental contingencies by Burn and Stalker (1961): they identify mechanistic and organic structures. In which, mechanistic is a reflection of bureaucracy structure and organic structure as post-bureaucracy.

A mechanistic organization takes a machine as its basic model. It is designed to be formal and specialized, with correct role prescriptions for each task and responsibility, often expressed in detailed manuals of procedures or collections of job descriptions. There are many formal rules, procedures, and instructions. Jobs are narrowly defined. The system of control is hierarchical, with restricted opportunities for mostly vertical communication, in the other words, the managers tell people what to do. This structure is often to be found in stable environments which have the high level of uncertainty avoidance such as Germany (Geert Hofstede, 2011) and more frequently in large organizations that employ a large number of people. Bureaucracy structure has achieved many successful such as it used to be an efficient structure for large companies, McDonald is a good example for this case (Clegg et al., 2011), satisfied social value (most of us prefer certainty, order and regimentation) and the needs for standards and benchmarks, besides that, the control of this structure help to raise the trust between people in the firms (Braverman, 1974).