Question & Answer: In the case of the Coyote and Road Runner, one might question the ethics of the…..

One example of ethical work culture would be the I.T. Company of India called Infosys. The Organizational values are strongly imbibed in the blood of their employees; women employees are given higher respect and priority owning to the more challenging responsibilities they undertake in their work and personal life; the compensation packages are well justifying as against the efforts put in by their employees thus ensuring an environment so conducive that the employees willingly work for the betterment of the Organization as a whole.

The leader has further created an Organization based upon strong ethical values by undertaking the following steps:

•       Undertaken activities across the Organizational departments which are genuinely transparent in nature, enabling of all way flow of communication to ensure more accountability into the system, and responsibility around the ethical behaviors should be on top priority by the Leaders of all the Departments and even upon the employees.

•       A team has been formed to deal with counseling activities to be granted to the employees in distress. Further a separate unit has been dedicated to the women employees in order to empathy more with their problems to deal with the sensitive issues such as sexual harassment cases in the Organization.

•       Constant training and education is imparted to the managers as well as to the employees so as to prevent them from undertaking any steps which is illegal and unethical to the Organization. Awareness and warnings are also spread to bring about quality integration of their performances.

•       Strict actions to be taken against the employees who practise gender discrimination at the work place. It is to be noted that racial discrimination is not part of the Indian culture any time hence the Company never had any issue in this regard.

•       Frequent reviews are obtained by the clients by an autonomous unit to investigate any case of inappropriate behavior of the employees to fool the clients.

•       Cyber ware is always strengthened in order to avoid any scope for hacking or misuse of Company data.

Alternatively, taking an example of a fictitious case study of the Organization called ABC Financials which is into the business of offering customized financial services to its clients. The main line of business is to advise the clients with regards to their financial planning such as investments into the Capital markets, banking, etc. The Organization has a decade long experience in the field of Finance and have gained phenomenal name in this segment. However, in the recent days, ABC financials have witnessed high employee turnover as well as the paradigm shift of its clients to other competitors.

The business leader undertook the following unethical practices in the Organization:

One phenomenon that had been noticed over a period of a year was that the contribution of the employees with regards to the time they are expected to devote to their respective profiles was quite alarming. The performance of such employees raised the question of the constructive man-hours devoted by them. It was learnt that few of the employees had learnt to manipulate the working hours into the time punching machine. As a result, the computer would track 8.5 hours of total work as against merely 5-6 hours that the employees would actually give. Hence it was an unethical practice to misuse the company time for personal gains or leisure.

•       Being an American Organization, certain middle level managers have undertaken the racial and cultural discrimination at the work place, causing hindrances to the actual career growth of certain employees in their respective departments. Also abusive behavior, commanding attitude or throwing around the seniority tantrums have often been suffered by the lower level employees. Such a discrimination or abusive behavior is unethical.

•       The brokers or the advisors of the Company have at times not shown the correct sales targets to the Companies and have kept aside the fees given by the clients to avail such financial services, with themselves. In other words, they have exploited the resources of the Company to gain personal advantages out of it which is again unethical.

•       On the part of the higher levels of management, there had been lack of transparency in their decision making process concerning the employees in various way. Upon asking or questioning by the lower levels of management, the seniors have often lied to them about the policies or about the strategic decisions, so undertaken by them. Such a behavior of lying and suppressing of facts is unethical.

•       The employees have also violated various cyber rules that governed the Organization by undertaking unethical activities such as hacking of the system to get an unofficial access to various other web pages which are otherwise not allowed by the Company policies. Such web pages also invited a threat of virus attack thereby causing a personal loss to the Company’s assets. Such a violation was again unethical.

•       In one or two cases, it was also observed that though the incidences went unreported, there had been cases of sexual harassment in the Organization. This is a highly unethical practice on the part of any employee of the Organization. Bullying of the co-workers or junior employees had been another serious issue concerning the Organization. This was making the entire workplace very uncomfortable to work in.

•       Various other illegal activities were also observed on the part of the financial advisors where they wooed the clients to invest their funds into the products which were ill-performing in the markets but could fetch better commissions to the employees. Also money expected to be invested in certain funds were embezzled by the employees. All these illegal activities were certainly unethical as well.