Significance of Business Ethics-Free-Samples-Myassignmenthelp.com

Question: To what extent do business ethics concepts (ethical culture, ethical leadership, ethical climate etc) explain the "systemic cultural issues" at SMRT? Answer: In the recent times, several factors lead to the growth of the business. Ethics is one of such crucial element responsible for business growth as ethical behavior brings vital benefits to the business in the long-run. Ethical behavior helps in developing long-lasting positive impact on the growth of the company. This includes the ability to retain and attract the highly talented employees by building a positive reputation within the organization. The significance of ethics in business is far beyond morale of organizational team bond and employees loyalty. The ethical activities in the business is directly related to the organizational profitability both in the long-term and short-term (Trevino and Nelson 2016). The investors nowadays seek out mostly ethical operating firms to be socially responsible. According to Trevino and Nelson (2016), organizational culture and ethics both are the key components relating to the success of the company. The ethical codes lead to the systematic and smooth flow of the business in the organization. In the current scenario, abuses and fraud leads to major setback of the organization annually. There are many corruptions presently going within the SMRT. Bad and unethical behavior in SMRT is nothing new. On the other hand, Kish-Gephart, Harrison and Trevio (2010) commented that the major concerns lies in determining if the ethical lapses are due to the affect of bad apples (bad individuals) in the company or bad barrel that is the organizational environment. A systematic approach would lead to SMRTs cultural transformation that leads to sustainable results. Inadequate systematic approach is the only factor that stands out in the successful transformation of the organization. Effective communication between the management and employees would lead to t he growth of SMRT. Each organization is different having its own corporate culture and unique style of working. Organizational culture should be successfully implemented to achieve maximum efficiency. The ideologies, beliefs, values and principles of a company form its culture. The organizational culture control the methods and ways in which employee behave in the workplace and outside the organization. Lack of ethics in SMRT is due to poor planning and systematic failure in each segment of its business (Valentine, Fleischman and Godkin 2016). Valentine, Fleischman and Godkin (2016) commented that the employees are left unmonitored, which leads to the slack in the individuals performance and the tasks are usually left uncompleted and unmonitored. The employees are improperly trained and such untrained employees often make excuses for not finishing up the tasks as per the requirements of the business standards (Trevin and Brown 2004). If the business environment is not perfect or suitable than any norma l person would not be able to function adequately and therefore are called as bad apples of the organization. Last year, rainwater flooded in an SMRT tunnel through the opening near Bishan station, which was waist deep. It displayed the poor management culture present within the organization (SIM 2017). According to Loh (2017), organizational culture and leadership is interdependent on each other. The leaders affect the organizational culture through various aspects. This includes efficient attention, role modeling, recruitment, promotion and critical incidents. They are truly held responsible for the prevailing ethical behavior present in the organization as they affect policies, culture and practices. SMRTs fails in developing a clear standard for the organization. However, on the other hand, Soltani and Maupetit (2015) commented that the leaders or managers are unable to design an efficient plan that could communicate the company standards within the organization. An ethical leader present in the organization should be of a moral and good character. He should be trustworthy, honest, and concern for the people as well as society. Besides being a moral person, he or she should be able to set all the ethical standards for the organization. He should role model through visible action s, give rewards to their subordinates. He should also communicate about the values and ethics to be followed within the organization. If an individual possess both the traits, then only he or she can hold the reputation required for being an ethical leadership. According to Maynard (2008), effective ethical compliances program if practiced by the management helps in reducing the emerging possibilities of any negative public relation and penalties leading to misconduct. The organization should introduce carrot and stick approach. This means if the companies are able to prevent the prevailing misconduct within the organization and avoid penalties thee may receive carrot (reward). On the other hand, de Jong, Cur?eu and Leenders (2014) commented that if the company fails to follow the policies and procedures they would receive stick (punishment) for their penalties. The codes of ethics are the formal statements that convey the rules and guidelines that should be followed by the organization. This further helps the employees to identify key ethical issue and further provides a mean to resolve and address the functional areas of the business. According to the bad apple and bad barrel theory, commented by Soltani and Maupetit (2015) bad apple refers to the few unsavory individuals. They are responsible for unethical behavior and hence influence the ethical decision-making within the organization. On the other hand, bad barrel refers that people in the organization are not naturally unethical or ethical but are greatly influenced by the organizational culture that surrounds them. Systematic evaluation helps in determining the firm effectiveness that leads to organizational ethical performances and programs. It provides an objective and systematic approach that surveys the ethical condition existing within the organization. Bad and unethical behavior prevails in almost every organization. The major trick is to ascertain the present ethical lapses within the organization. The main point lies in knowing whether the ethical lapses prevailing are caused due to certain bad apples in the company or bad barrel that is the company i tself. If the problem of unethical culture lies within an individual (bad apple) then it can easily be rooted out. If the core problem lies in bad barrel, then it becomes quite difficult to find the perfect ethical solution (de Jong, Cur?eu and Leenders 2014). According to Biggerstaff, Cicero and Puckett (2015), the causes or factors related to increasing number of bad apples and employees misconduct in the organization are due to various factors. This includes lack of resources in the organization to get the jobs done and lack of familiarity with the standards applied for the job. Fear of losing the job makes the employees more stressful to complete the desired target. Moreover, Malik et al. (2015) commented that when employees believe that the organizational policies can easily be bypassed or override. They start bending rules for their personal gains and do not take the code of conducts seriously. The unethical employees or bad apples of the organization further believe to be rewarded irrespective of the means (Maynard 2008). Unethical behavior in SMRT often occurs in collectives as the employees are not individually accountable but as a whole. Malik et al. (2015) commented that peer influence is another major flaw present in recent times. The unethical behaviors in an employee make them feel as bystander apathy for their division of responsibility. If the top-level officials or employees fail to practice ethics on a daily basis, the codes and policies to be followed by the organization would be worthless. SMRT need to practice ethics religiously by making it an explicit part of each employees job description. More often, the SMRTs employees do not feel to do their jobs as nobody told them to perform their job. Therefore, it is important for the leader to take necessary measures and actions for the ethical behavior in the organization as few of the bad apples can often destroy the whole barrel. The factors responsible for bad barrel of an organization are inefficient business environment due to unethical companys culture and practices. A companys culture can easily be known through the behavior of its employees. SMRTs organizational culture has profound effect on the employees behavior. Due to prevalence of negative corporate culture within the organization, it becomes difficult to promote ethical practices. SMRTS corporate culture lags behind because of the lack of moral leadership. When the mangers or top-level leaders are unethical, the subordinates will definitely emulate the bad behavior. SMRTs Chief Executive Officer, Desmond Kuek recently resigned from his post due to constant break down and failure caused by the transport company (The Online Citizen. 2018). As a CEO of SMRT, the systematic cultures issues prevailing in the organization were raised for a number of times by the CEO but all were in vain. The SMRTs maintenance problem has too deep-rooted cultural issues . The company itself cannot resolve the deep-rooted unethical cultural issues in the organization unless each employees identifies the root problem and evaluate the problem for the cause (Biggerstaff, Cicero and Puckett 2015). SMRT lacks locus of control internally or within the management (as shown in appendix). There are generally two types of locus of control, internal and external. Internal is the belief that employees are in charge of the events occurring in ones life. While, external is the belief that chance fate or outside forces determines the organizational events (Malik et al. 2015). SMRT follows external locus of control approach by blaming others due to lack of self-efficacy. Unethical behavior in the workplace did not to be extravagant or too rampant within the organization. The corporate scandals and mismanagement structure of SMRT generally culminate due to the increasing damages that make the management situations more worsen. Almost majority of Singapore citizens have witnessed ethical misconduct prevailing within the organization. The most prevalent of them is unethical behavior within the organization, which is widespread and violates the company policies. According to Kangas et al. (2014), an ethical organization constitutes of effective communication, trust, openness, transparency, Integrity, value and openness. Most individuals are the product of the contexts in which they find themselves. The employees in the organizations should be socialized in their roles (Kangas et al. 2014). The expected role behavior is to be learned from other expectations. The leaders should give voice to the values as this helps the employees to be ethical by focusing on post-decision making. The employees should be lead to do the things more effectively by knowing their job appropriately. Generally, the organizational follows compliance approach, thus the organizational culture affects the people within the organization. The culture includes basic assumptions related to the concerns that are right and fair (Soltani and Maupetit 2015). The employees should express shared beliefs, values and assumptions that would hold the organization in a combined manner. Value based approach of ethics is highly inspirational and proactive in nature. The major emphasizes are given on expectations of high ethical standards and behavior (Nygaard et al. 2017). On the other hand, Compliance approach is punitive and reactive in nature. It emphasizes requires ethical behavior while obeying the law. Lack of ineffective leaders in SMRT is the main cause of bad barrel development in the organization (Scholten and Ellemers 2016). Business ethics should be in the blood line of any corporation. The effectiveness depends on various formal and informal systems with various policies and codes. Moreover, SMRT fails to reward their employees for their good performance, which further creates lack of enthusiasm and negativity within the workplace. SMRTs further lacks proper training and orientation program for the inexperienced or unskilled workers in the organization. The decision making process are also very ineffective leading to various mishaps and accidents by the company. Therefore, this leads to maintenance lapse within the organizational culture. An ethical organization system always requires ethical leaders with strong moral characteristics (Stevens 2008). Codes of ethics are just guidelines, which is meaningless unless applied in the organization as a part of culture. Bad barrel that is ineffective business environment is generally stronger cause than the bad apple. Even the good and nicest of employee turns ineffective in an unethical and corrupt organization. Employees in SMRT are most prone to do wrong or unethical practices, if they are unable to know the right thing. The organization lacks proper monitoring and assessment of code of ethics present within the organization. Inherently, ethical behavior starts at the top-level of the organization. Employees always emulate their own leader and the most relevant factor responsible for unethical corporate culture is the personal character of the employee. Code effectiveness should depend on the effective communication and cultural values. Unethical behavior culture in SMRT is mostly due to the result of bad barrel It is important for the leader to effectively communicate the ethical decisions as it would help in resolving SMRTs ethical issues. Positive work environment can also be created through the reward behavior that should be consistent with the code. Bad apples can be selected and sorted out but if the problem lies in the barrel itself it would affect the entire apple. The productivity and efficiency of the employees is severely affected if the existing business environment condition is negative and corrupt. Hence, it would be true to decipher bad barrel is stronger than bad apples. References: Biggerstaff, L., Cicero, D.C. and Puckett, A., 2015. Suspect CEOs, unethical culture, and corporate misbehavior.Journal of Financial Economics,117(1), pp.98-121. de Jong, J.P., Cur?eu, P.L. and Leenders, R.T.A., 2014. When do bad apples not spoil the barrel? Negative relationships in teams, team performance, and buffering mechanisms.Journal of Applied Psychology,99(3), p.514. Kangas, M., Feldt, T., Huhtala, M. and Rantanen, J., 2014. 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