Ethics are considered to be the backbone of every organization as they help in deciding how an organization is run and how its reputation is viewed from the outside. Ethics internally drive business excellence as they encourage effective business practice. In addition to that, when employees are always willing to go an extra-mile it often attracts more clients for the organization. Odland (2006, 2) adds that for ethics to be fully practiced, superior staff or bosses must first see their employees as their stakeholders who are striving to achieve the same common purpose as them. This will create trust, effective two way communication, honesty and team work between all employees. However, having fully practiced ethics within an organization is sometimes difficult as the organization consists of employees with different culture and values. Jennings (2010, 28) adds that though the top management tries to maintain ethics internally it is not always a success as sometimes employees violate them. Apart from business ethics being viewed as oxymoron statistics show that only 59% of employees’ believe that their organization is highly ethical overall. Equally disturbing, approximately 65% of individuals who witnessed ethical violations in the workplace are not reporting those (Communicating ethical values to your employees 2009). Therefore this clearly shows that it is not easy to maintain ethics internally. One of the reasons being as human beings we view things differently; what one may see as right does not mean the next person would do so for example, during my internship there was a little bit of drama at one point due to that employees interact more often to an extent where they can just share their personal lives and gossip about the boss. One time they gossiped about how the boss wasn`t paying them enough money in front of a new employee who later told the boss. After other employees discovered they somehow started avoiding and ignoring the new employee, she was now the enemy.
A lot of questions arise from this whether the new employee should have told the boss after eavesdropping or not? Should the employees even gossip at all? Does the new employee deserve to be ignored or avoided most importantly her motive behind telling the boss was she trying to portray herself as a better person or she was just being honest?
4 comments:
Interesting situation.
If I was the new employee I would have tried to steer clear of that situation. When you hear of people talking about other staff members etc it is best to avoid the situation and not get involved. As for the other employees talking about their pay and their boss, they should have kept their opinions to themselves, or if they had a huge problem, spoken to the boss or filed a complaint with human resources. You also stated that what some people think is right, others may view as wrong. Throughout the world, there are many organisations that exist (such as the International Public Relations Association and PRCA) that uphold a code of ethics that many orgnisations are assigned to. These organisations are from all over the globe. Do you think this is an effective way of setting moral standards for different agencies from different countries? There has also been an ongoing debate of creating a set of ethics that all practices should be assigned to. Would you agree with this?
Personally I think the new employee should just mind her business and not intervene in anything that does not concern her. In addition to that, I feel that if employees have an issue they should take it to the boss and avoid gossiping as negative outcomes that can also ruin the relationship one had with the boss. I don`t think it would work let alone be a good motion to have the same moral ethics throughout the globe main reason being culture; we have so many different cultures plus the way some PR activities would be done in Malaysia based on the client would be different in America let alone Australia. Moreover we have so many different perspectives towards different practices, so I don`t think it would work.
Hello,
Well, I think the relations with employees are not good and need to be improved. They should also be guarded by the company's values, for instance what goes on in the company should be confidential and not be shared with clients because the moment you tell your clients such things they may lose trust in you and shift to other companies. And we do not want that to happen because it will then make it very difficult and costly to find new clients.
As for the culture part, during my internship I worked with people from different cultural backgrounds and different nationalities. That was not a barrier at work; we all got along because the moment you step in that office, everything that goes on inside and is confidential, remain confidential. And it was also easy to work with clients from different countries, such as India, South Africa and so on due to the fact that there were Indians workers for instance. They knew their background better and how to deal with their kind of people and as one of the corporate values, teamwork was the most treasured to help everyone get along regardless of cultural backgrounds.
It is very important to study the culture of your multicultural clients so I don’t think it is appropriate to ignore new employees because it will never solve the problem. The moment you ‘hire’ them, you have to let them know your expectations, guide them through your organizational policies and so on. The old workers have to set an example. This is what I got as an intern and I was very free to express myself as well as writing to my supervisors if I have recommendations.
Refering to Ashlea`s comment she is true about code of ethics assigned to organizations, and this may work based on the ethical dilemma by Dikeledi.
Code of ethics are effective way of setting moral standards for different organizations from different countries, if not so then the meaning of pr will soon loose its value, we need code of ethics as foundations to any uprising issue within the organization otherwise we would tarnish organizations if we do not apply them.
Remember that code of ethics were set based on right and wrong any wrong follows a punishment.
In this case above i believe its about ones discretion "common sense" look on both sides of issue and try to come out with the best decision. For me i believe if i was the new employee i would have stepped back, how do i know maybe they are just laying trying to get be into unnecessary tensions with my boss.
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