In an organization, many employees are supposed to work together to achieve a common goal, which is to ensure that the company makes a profit. Thus, the general concept of an organization is that the company’s employees are supposed to perform their daily job with no mistakes or minimum mistakes and ensure that at the end of the day, they have achieved what they are supposed to do as per their job description.
However, the management’s responsibility in a company is to monitor the organization’s performance is stable for them to ensure that the investors are happy and ensure that their employee turnover is low. However, it is not always possible to have a perfect work environment whereby the employees’ tasks and management run smoothly as there are many different characters in an organization, which brings about various reactions, opinions, ideas, and so on.
Thus, there is always an expectation from the management to its employees and from the employees to the management. These expectations vary according to individuals as many factors influence these expectations. Some of the factors that can influence expectations are the past experience of a person and what they have heard from other people/companies, and they expect or want things to be the same.
As a consequence of these expectations, many arguments happen between the management and the employees. This is unavoidable but must be handled in the right manner to avoid a high turnover of staff. The employees always want a raise in their salaries and as much benefit as they can get from the company. In contrast, the management wants to keep their costs as low as possible but ensure that the productivity level of its employees is at its highest.
As a result, when employees are unhappy, they tend to protest by being unethical at the workplace. Unethical behavior can be defined as an unacceptable way of behaving, in this case, in a workplace. This can be caused by various reasons. One of them is as quoted “its attributed to the personal characteristics of individuals or bad barrels” (Donovan, 2002). Apart from that, unethical behavior can also, as quoted, “the theory that organizational and societal variables in the system influence unethical decisions and behaviors within an organization” (Donovan, 2002). Unethical behaviors in a workplace could be such as long-distance calls, copying the company’s confidential materials or software, falsifying the number of hours worked during a week, and so on.
Companies have to train their management to handle the above kind of unethical behavior, which is often viewed as a serious offense. In most cases, decisions and procedures are always handled by the top management using the top-bottom approach whereby the management makes a decision and passes this decision to its employees to follow. The employees will have no option but to abide by these rules. Thus, the management creates many systems, rules, and procedures to follow during a crisis or a minor problem in the company. This set of rules and procedures is done by discussing with the management team and the owner.
They also decide on what levels is discretion advised and so on. They also set the people who will be handling each issue and taking care of the problem. This set of guidelines is then followed by the following management that takes over the company and informs all the new employees who are joining the company through the employee handbook given.
Based on my research on some of the procedures that were highlighted, I have created my own set of procedures that I think would be practical in today’s organization.
The above chart shows how the management can react to solve unethical behavior in a company. Firstly, when the management identifies a problem, they should send the department head or the supervisor to investigate the matter. This will then give them a more accurate view of who did the act. Next, the management, along with the supervisor or manager, should bring in the employee and inform him/her of the suspected offense committed and what the consequence of their action is. The employee is also given a chance at this stage to admit their mistake and explain why they did it, and so on.
Then, the management informs the employee of their punishment and makes them sign as to agree that they have committed that mistake, and the procedure above has been followed, and thus, they were informed of their punishment and so on.
This is to avoid any future inconvenience to the company if the employee decides to sue the company and so on. After the above procedure is done, the management then evaluates the action above. For example, they will evaluate what the problem was, how the problem was solved and what the outcome is upon solving the problem. This will allow the management to judge their actions and try to improve on any mistakes made and so on. This will be done for almost any mistakes done by employees to ensure that the employees are completely aware of their actions and know their consequences.
Apart from that, the management shall also conduct appraisals for the company at least twice a year. This is whereby they give a set of questions and ask all their employees to fill up. The employees will be asked how was the company’s performance, how did the management handle them, do they have any complaints or suggestions to give, and so on. This will make employees feel important and that they are able to give their views and opinions without being judged or fired.
In the short term, the employees may feel a little uncomfortable, and it may also cause some turnovers as they may feel that the company’s management is too strict and too demanding. However, in the long run, employees will soon realize that this procedure actually helps them to perform better and enables them to express themselves to the management, which is something that not all company does as most companies do not take into account of how their employees feel about them and so on. Thus, the above procedure will definitely be a benefit to the management as well as the employees.
Bibliography
- Unethical Behavior in the Workplace, 2003. Web.
- Donovan, Jo Hawkins, 2002. Web.
- Organizational Behavior Studies. Web.