Ethics in Organizations

In today's society, ethics play an important role in the success and progress toward future growth of companies and organizations. According to www.Merriam-Webster.com, ethics i s defined as "a set of moral principles" or "the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation." This paper will examine the importance of proper ethics and their role in organizations. In addition, it will discuss individual influences that impact ethical behavior within organizations and ideas for how organizations can influence ethical behavior in its employees.

Ethics are a major concern in organizations because of their impact on business and an organization's public image. The media is full of negativity as anyone can see that turns on a television. Drama is what sells and the televisions networks want ratings so that they can sell to advertisers to profit. This has caused ethical issues to become a major area of concern for many organizations. With a bad public image a business or organization will eventually cease to exist if it cannot become positively associated with its consumers. For example, according to the Department of Education, most universities rely on funding via financial aid through the government to help students afford tuition. If a university was to be caught utilizing unethical behavior they could lose access to Title IV Funding which is financial aid for their students. This would have a major negative impact on student enrollment and the ability for the university to stay afloat. The moral responsibility to do what is right drives ethics and can have a large impact on organizations and their culture.

There are many individual influences that can impact ethical behavior and it begins with an organization's leaders. Leaders must adhere to high ethical standards or they run the risk of their employees making mistakes and causing severe damage to a company's business. Gottlieb, J, writes "Organizational leaders need to be the primary architects and sponsors of culture realignment. This is not work that can be delegated. Leaders need to model the desired behaviors of the preferred culture, teach others how to enact such behaviors, and ensure that appropriate formal and informal practices required to embed such behaviors in daily work life are established." (Levin, Gottlieb, 2009, p. 31) Values driver behavior and the values relayed from leadership take on a large role at the lower levels of many organizations. Employees come from all walks of life being raised differently from various cultures with many different values and traditions. These factors all contribute to separate individual influences that can impact ethical behavior. Stephen Covey writes in his book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," that people are the average of those five people they spend the most time with in their social circles (47). These social