New Survey of Workplace Ethics Shows Surprising Results

A Survey conducted in the USA in 2011 by the National Business Ethics Survey (NBES) indicates that the US work place ethical culture is evolving. About 65% of employees have gained the nerve to report any form of misconduct they notice in their work place. Most of the reported violations hovered around inappropriate offers of payments to public officials and stealing. Out of these, 70% of those who witnessed these violations made formal reports. About 66% of employees also filed reports on the falsification of financial information, inappropriate use of competitor’s information, abusive behavior, the fabrication of expense reports, goods delivered that failed to meet stipulations, trading on in-house information, and inappropriate political contributions. However, only 43% reported contravention of internet use rules, while only 21% reported the misuse of social networking sites.

Unfortunately, the above good ethical actions were clouded by a worrying warning signal that there is a likelihood of a drop in ethical standards in the near future. The 22% of employees who blew up the whistle faced various retaliations in their work places. This was very high in comparison to 15% and 12% in 2009 and 2007 respectively. Apart from that, the number of employees who were forced to compromise their company ethical standards in order to keep their jobs was also an all time high at 13% in 2011. This marked a sharp rise from 2009’s 9% and was registered as the highest rate since 2000. In addition to this, another worrying case was the increase in the number of companies that do not observe ethical standards. They increased from 35% two years ago to 42% in 2011. The 2011 NBES survey findings were writing a warning to US companies to up their game in ethical business or perish.

Critique

New Survey of Workplace Ethics Shows Surprising Results

The NBES survey findings paint a pessimistic view of the US businesses ethical standards. The primary reason why American businesses are recording falling ethical standards is because ethical and moral considerations have been shelved from management practices in the last few years. In this regard, business managers should start holding fast to a narrow adaptation of positivism, which excludes any references to intent.

It now seems obligatory for businesses in the USA to start offering a rational managerial framework that overtly puts into consideration a positive and comprehensive view of the human nature as well as its ethical aspects. If ethics in Business Schools is not visibly taken into account in the entire education of management students, the consequence would be disastrous (Maidment, 2012). This is especially true in regards to the continuous production of business managers who have no slightest detail of the primary ethical principles that drive the professional conduct of today’s businesses. Apart from that, they will not have the required virtues to keep up with this criterion. Business schools should thus consider it a challenge to educate their students on ethical business practices to stop the time bomb that is constantly ticking.

In this regard, this paper proposes a synthetic framework, which entails three business ethical dimensions to underlie the education of business leaders. This is because the theories that focus on either one or only two of these ethical dimensions have failed. The ethical dimensions are Norms/rationalism, Virtues/Stoicism and Goods/Hedonism. Hedonism is an ethical theory that believes that a person can only thrive on pleasure (Maidment, 2012). Therefore, it assesses actions on how much pain or pleasure they provide. This theory promotes goods and forgets virtues and norms. Utilitarianism is its modern version and unlike the hedonistic theory, it promotes happiness for everyone and not one individual. However, they both renounce moral virtues at the expense of pleasure.

Stoicism theory mainly deals with virtues and it states that the virtues that sustain wills that are cognizance with nature are the main good. It believes that resilience and restraint are the best means by which destructive emotions can be defeated. Unfortunately, the theory does not have any reference to norms or moral well being. Without an orientation to human action through good deeds, virtues turn out to be the sole goal in life (Maidment, 2012). Rationalism is the third and final dimension; it mainly deals with norms. Moral rationalism considers the truth to be deductive and intellectual rather than sensory. However, a perspective that holds norms in high esteem at the expense of virtues and goods is likely to be ethically incompetent.

Conclusion

Ethical education in business schools should be aimed at imparting ethical character and behaviors to the future business professionals. The provision of a set of theories and a framework through which they can be comprehended is inadequate. The results highlighted by new surveys on the workplace indicate that significant changes need to be made to promote ethics in the workplace. Current and future business professionals should be aware of the fundamental value of moral goods as human tenets that can make them better individuals. They should comprehend the character of moral norms as sensible inferences that can enable them achieve moral goods and virtues in their actions.

References

Maidment, F. (2012). Annual Editions: Management (16th ed.). McGraw-Hill. Publishing. ISBN: 9780073528632