Question

Unethical behaviour are often triggered by __________.

• A. pressure from higher management to achieve goals
• B. an organizational atmosphere that condones such behaviour
• C. both (A) and (B)
• D. a system of checks and balances

Answer 1

Answer: (C)

both (A) and (B)

1. Resentment feeling: When employees feel that they are not being treated fairly and are not being rewarded substantially for the amount of effort they are placing into their work they tend to cheat the company they are working for. Their most common perception is that they should not worry about the organization and its well being when the organization is not worrying about them.
2. Misguided loyalty: It is another reason for unethical conduct on the job. People sometimes lie because they think in doing so they are being loyal to the organization or to their bosses. Examples of this type of behavior are not hard to find. For example, managers at automobile companies who hide or falsify information about defects that later cause accidents and kill people or managers at pharmaceutical companies who hide information about dangerous side effects of their drugs. No doubt these managers believed they were protecting their employers. They may well have seen themselves as good, loyal employees.
3. Environment: Sometimes, employee acts unethically in business because his employer condones the behavior. For example, in the stock market traders are supposed to cheat a little to create the market hype necessary for its efficient working. This is unethical, but the behavior is so common on the trading floor that it is never questioned.
4. Individual factor:Employees who obey authority figures’ unethical directives or act merely to avoid punishment. They manipulate others for their own personal gain, fail to see the connection between their actions and outcomes, and believe that ethical choices are driven by circumstance.
5. Pressure: It can drive people to do things they wouldn’t normally do. Pressure to succeed, pressure to get ahead, pressure to meet deadlines and expectations, pressure from co-workers, bosses, customers, or vendors to engage in unethical activities or at least look the other way.
6. Career Advancement: A person acts unethically because she believes it helps her career. An unethical act is used as a means of impressing a superior or hurting the career of a competitor. For example, a person sabotages a co-worker’s project as a means of making him/herself to look better in comparison.
7. Issue-specific:Issues can vary in the degree of harm they impose on the victim, and on the degree of agreement among peers. Sometimes, a particular issue requires unethical behavior from the employee and there is not other option they can utilize.
8. Greed: Of course, some people do not just do something wrong in a weak moment or because they are not sure about what is the right thing to do. Some people know exactly what they are doing and why. Self-interest, personal gain, ambition, and downright greed are at the bottom of a lot of unethical activity in business.
9. Ignorance: Ethical conflicts or violations are not always transparent, and it’s easy for an employee to perform an unethical act without knowing it. For this reason, it is important for companies to make employees aware both of the company’s general ethics policy, and specific examples of ethical and unethical behavior.
10. Insensitivity towards others: Unethical behavior also increases when employees feel that their actions will not harm a potential victim and that their peers will not condemn their actions. They will engage in more unethical behavior when the company promotes an “everyone for him or herself” atmosphere instead of an environment that focuses employee attention on the company’s stakeholders.