What is Ethics?
A set of
standards derived from Social Values, to choose what is good and evil, Right or wrong, ought to do and not to do is Ethical Standards. These are the set of values in accordance to the Social norms which helps to survive in the community. The Behavior values which are considered important presently for the existence, acts as a standard for the future ethical organization decision making.
There has been an increasing Unethical practices gained importance for being into Fair practices, things came into limelight after the Unethical practices like Financial Frauds by companies like Enron and Arthur Anderson carried on, by which there has been an Increasing pressure on the organization from the Government body and has more concerned on social responsibility and in unethical practices.
An ethical decision making should be in such a way that it should be legally and morally, acceptable by Employees and the Shareholders. May be an ethical decision doesn’t always directs to Ethical behavior, whereas an Ethical Behavior always comes before an Ethical decision making.
Factors leading to Unethical Decision Making:
· One of the reason why there is been an increasing unfair practices are because of Competition Driven Performance Management, where the possibilities of Violation of rules are higher.
· Since the objective of any organization is Profit maximization, the concentration of the mangers tends to be more on short term goals rather than long term, which thrust them for taking unethical norms just to meet the performance targets.
· Intrinsic Factors, like lack of Moral Awareness about the nature of decision, can make the decision go wrong and other Individual Factor values can also arises problem in making decision as perorganization Ethical standards which influences greatly where the intensity depends on how strong one is at, at their own values.
· Even after the implementation of Ethics policy it has been observed that, the subordinates follow what their supervisors likes rather than, what the policy says. So, if the manager is unethical, the subordinates follow the manager in such unfair practices.
· Problems in Ethical decision making may occur not only when the intentions are evil, but also when there is a conflict between Individual Interest and social norm.
The Asia First and India’s largest private sector steel company “Tata Steel” was the first company to formulate the policy called “Code of Conduct” in 1998. The document contains the values, ethics, and business principles which the employee has to follow, which was even later extended to the stakeholders like suppliers and dealers of the company. A position called Ethics counselor at Top level management was created, who was responsible for creating awareness among the employees, stakeholders and even among the families of the employees. To motivate, coordinator were rewarded on the basis of quality of work and which high moral value behavior is presented on monthly basis. This was a Proactive step taken by the Tata Group.
