Some years ago while consulting to a large professional firm, I found myself interviewing a graduate recruit who had recently joined the firm … lets call her Angela. Angela bounced into my office, perfectly groomed, eyes shining, brimming with enthusiasm, and obviously delighted to have secured a position with a firm she felt proud to belong to. As I listened to her hopes for the future I couldn’t help feeling despondent, wondering just how long it would take for the organisation to wear down her enthusiasm with it’s risk management policies; lower her self-esteem with lack of recognition or appreciation for her personal contribution; sap her energy with work overload, and dim the light in her eyes when her sense of purpose is lost.
Some eighteen months later I bumped into Angela. She didn’t seem to be so chipper, her clothes had toned down, she no longer had a skip in her step nor a sparkle in her eye. She had become institutionalised.
I’m sure we all know people like Angela – men and women who join organisations with infinite hope, and yet often these people come to feel under attack. They begin to feel cheated by their employer because it has not delivered on it’s implicit promise of a mutually rewarding relationship, and in turn they begin (often unconsciously) to cheat the organisation. This under-discussed dynamic is how the organisational context shapes employee behaviour. It is under this dynamic that an organisational culture where unethical behaviour can emerge.
Good people too can easily find themselves doing things they dislike because otherwise it would make them vulnerable; cost them their sense of group identity; and in dire circumstances, might cost them a promotion or a job. It can begin with something as simple as fudging a time sheets to meet unrealistic billing budgets, and incrementally escalate until it includes fudging annual reports, sandbagging new business and putting the department’s interest before the clients.
Ethics research highlights that pressure from management or the Board to meet unrealistic business objectives, and the tyranny of the short term and attendant deadlines, are the leading factors most likely to cause unethical corporate behaviour. Recent Australian research suggests that such workplace dynamics are playing out in Australian organisations which is why learning about Business Ethics must happen in the workplace, and not just in the classroom.
Post analysis of Australian corporate shortcomings, including HIH, NAB and The Australian Wheat Board, point as much to cultural dynamics as individual idiosyncrasies. Boards and business leaders must accept that unethical behaviour rarely flourishes in a vacuum. It is as much created and promoted by the organisational culture, as it is created by individual shortcomings.
Business Ethics is essentially about institutional integrity. The question has to be asked, “has the organisation recruited the appropriate CEO to model the behaviour expected, and to oversee adequate systems to ensure the ethical dimension of every business transaction is being managed?”. Managing ethics should be no different to managing other activities, and demands no less attention! Nothing less than your personal, and your organisation’s reputation is at stake!
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