Conflict as a Tool for Measuring Ethics at Workplace (original) (raw)

Impact of Ethical Issues on the Functioning of Enterprises – A Sociological Analysis

Webology, 2022

The article aims to describe the functioning of the organization in terms of ethics. Goffman's concept called the front stage and the backstage of social reality was selected from a wide range of literature. This metaphor comes from the theater, where the audience has access only to the show performed on stage and not to the backstage and rehearsals. According to Goffman, this mechanism applies to any social environment. It is the front stage that the audience must judge morally. The second area of human activity takes place behind the scenes, in which ethical principles, to put it mildly, are no longer the dominant criterion for assessing people's behavior.

Ethics, Conflict And Human Resource Managers In The New Economy

The interaction between conflict management and ethics in organisations occurs within a complex web of power relations, organisational structure and belief systems. Added to this have been the significant reforms organisations have undertaken in order to remain competitive in increasingly globalised markets. The role of human resource management (HRM) policies and practices has been pivotal in implementing these changes through the management of employees. Key to this role is the management of conflict in the workplace. It is argued that ethical decision making is challenged in an environment driven by the need for workplace efficiency. This paper considers a number of approaches to ethics and organisational conflict and concludes that a pluralist perspective may offer greater scope for fair decision making but at greater cost than other alternatives.

Cases in organizational ethics

2012

This ebook is the extension of another ebook Cases for Development ofEnvironmental and Ethical Competence, published by Viinius University in 2010 (ISBN: 978-9955-33-610-5) when carrying out the networking project Development of Environmental and Ethical Competence in Leadership and Management (project website: decom.vulchf.lt), funded by Nordplus Framework Programme in 2009-2010. The project was prompted by a need to highlight sustainability and accountability m business education curricula. Thus, the project partners from Estonian Business School, Norwegian School of Management BI, the University of Jyväskylä, Viinius University (the coordinator) and from 2010 Hanken School of Economics aimed to develop a curriculum that addresses management of environmental and ethical responsibilities of business and, in this way, contributes to raising business professionais' awareness of potential business risks as well as business opportunities opened by responsible behaviour. Another objective of the project was to highiight a socio-cultural perspective of decision-making and behaviours of the Nordic-Baltic societies in the cases which are presented in this publication. This ebook contains "old" and new case studies, yet with introductory chapters, which makes it possible to use it as a textbook. Some "old" cases in this edition were amended after their trial in an intensive course Cases in OrganizationalEthics in 2011. The partners then agreed to write introductory chapters to the topics that their cases cover. This version of the leaming material will be used in the same-titled intensive course in the forthcoming years in the partner universities. Jn the year 2012, the project on Development ofMoral Competence in Leadership and Management that focuses on an intensive programme alone was initiated with new competences and fresh outlooks from business ethics professionals from Tampere University and Riga International School of Economics and Business. The cases therein are meant for intermediate or advanced level students in management and leadership. However, wider use of the cases in other degree programmes is welcome. The cases address four issues that can he met in today's business world, namely, gendered practices in organizations, ethical leadership, impiementation of environmental standards and corporate volunteering. The cases have general and case-specific questions to be answered either alone by the student, after doing the required (also recommended) reading or / and in groups, when discussing implications of the issues described in the cases to organization management. Some of the organizations under scrutiny are fiction; some are real, yet, for the purposes of discussion of administrative and managerial issues are kept anonymous. The case of Swedbank in Lithuania invites participants to explore factual activities of this bank in the (course) participants' countries. This edition is a resuit of contribution provided by the participant organizations of the project. Thanks go to the authors of this edition who patiently waited for its publication in a new electronic format. Ali of them contributed their time, pedagogical experience and knowledge ofbusiness. The project team is also grateful to Egl Brasait for the translation of some chapters from Lithuanian to English. Altogether we have a strong belief that comments that we will receive from the students and colleagues will help us to improve the cases and managerial education quality. Raminta Puctait, PhD Editor and institutional coordinator 2 CASES IN ORGANIZATTONAL ETHICS Contents Women in managerial careers CASE 1. "Why is she getting annoyed with minor issues?" The Nina Case Ethical leadership, the role of the leader CASE 2. Keeping motivated m turbulent times CASE 3. Operation Scrub Brush-Ethical leadership development programme Environmental management systems in context: Small and medium textile enterprises CASE 4. Motives of EMS impiementation for textile companies Corporate volunteering: Tuning the organizational environment to sustainabiity 70 CASE 5. Developing a corporate volunteering programme in Swedbank in Lithuania 78 3 CASES IN ORGANIZATTONAL ETHICS

Managerial Ethics-A Tool for Social Crises

Social progress is constantly influenced by corruption and clientelism. One of the major causes is slow activity from experts on theoretical and practical management. In their decisions, they are not sufficiently ready to react to dynamism of innovations in technical disciplines and current theory and practice in management. Contemporary philosophy of management is based on maximising quantity, expecting to deal with quality in due course. Management is focused on quantitative values and disregards the significance of the unity between quantity and quality. This leads to lack of transparency within management and uncertain efficiency of the decision-making process. Disintegration affects the cooperation between individual production and administration branches. The academic world sees ethics more as a theoretical discipline connected with social sciences. Many companies, however, have begun to realise the need for innovation as part of successful long-term enterprising and creating ethical relationships inside and outside the company. Corruption scandals and increasing economic crime show that it is counterproductive to advance business environment without adhering to moral and ethical principles.

Change of Management Values in Estonian Business Life in 2007-2009

Chinese Business Review, 2011

The paper deals with the change of management values in Estonian business life in the year of the rapid growth (2007) as compared with the year of hard decline (2009). The hypothesis is set that company managers do not have permanent values but they change accordingly to the change in economic conditions: in economical welfare situations business-managers more eagerly take larger responsibilities on ethical and philantrophical stages but in crisis only the lower stages (economical and legal ones) could be detained. In the paper, we firstly observe if values change in general and secondly we study if our pre-stated hypothesis holds. As the research method we use the method of critical incidents.

Moral dilemmas of employees in businesses operating in South-east Europe

African Journal of Business Management, 2011

Conditions imposed by corporate operations are such that a relationship between a company, potential customers and the public is affected by a great number of both internal and external factors, such as: requirements of investors, pressure to meet unrealistic business deadlines, profit at any price, pressure of competition, globalization, etc. A prevailing belief is that business activities need to be planned and conducted in a way offering customers what they need, when they need it, and where and how they need it, regardless of the means by which this goal is accomplished. Accordingly, numerous ethical theorists increasingly emphasize the importance of morality, indicating the main problems of modern business practice: deception concerning product quality, avoidance to indicate possible harmful effects of a product, production and marketing of unsafe and hazardous products, financial misfeasance, unethical advertising, etc. One must put the following question: Are the employees un...

Morality in Conflict in the Workplace

Conflict is still thought of as something to avoid at all costs in most organizations. Unfortunately, the way conflict is currently framed by Western society keeps it from being better understood and well managed. Most workplace conflict is currently thought of as happening to the people involved, based on Western society’s dependence on realism as the predominant way of knowing. This orientation to reality along with an unconscious reliance on the implicit morality of Western society’s “strict family dynamics versus nurturing family dynamics” conditions the response to conflict resolution. Current traditional conflict resolution techniques are not solving the problem of workplace conflict. A new awareness of the intrapsychic processes of conflict is required in order to create a different orientation to conflict and longer lasting resolution. This thesis contends that the intrapsychic processes are the cause of most, if not all, workplace conflict. These processes include: cognitive biases such as judgmentalism, prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination; cognitive errors that create perceptual distortions, and false realities; and emotional reactiveness based on evolutionary threat response. These tendencies coupled with Western society’s overarching moral paradigms create a conundrum impossible to overcome for most. In order to create a more effective way of dealing with the implicit aspects of conflict, a better understanding of intrapsychic processes must be brought forth. For this purpose, the moral psychology of social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, will be presented as a new way of viewing conflict in the workplace, using a social constructivism epistemology. From the reframing of workplace conflict using Haidt’s moral psychology, this thesis proposes a pilot for a new conflict training course with the goal of making morality, as defined by Haidt, conscious and accessible to managers and supervisors who must manage workplace conflict. Haidt’s moral psychology reframes traditional conflict in an evolutionary and moral way, which enhances the human tendencies toward altruism rather than selfishness. Reframing conflict as moral dilemmas changes the emphasis from unconscious colluding with forces outside oneself to the need for conscious awareness of the part one plays in conflict, intentionally or not. Conflict cannot be avoided as long as organizations are human-based, but it can be managed if it is understood.

Ethics as a foundation of management – a valuable resource or a relic in times of crisis?

Jurnal Ekonomi Bisnis Volume 16. No. 3 Desember 2011, pp. 147-157

"Following rules of activity, resulting from ethical norms accepted in given society, may be one of sources of a competitive advantage. Though, it can be presumed that not everybody is aware of the necessity as well as of advantages connected with activity running this way. In this aspect, the aim of the article to show Polish businessmen attitude towards challenges flowing from handling business in accord with ethics. All theoretical issues discussed herein pertain to the topic of business ethics. Empirical data presented in this paper were gathered by the authors during 410 interviews about ethics that were conducted with businessmen running small and middle firms. The main intention was to determine if obeying ethic rules is a real value for entrepreneurs. From obtained results the conclusion, that Polish businessmen declare the importance of ethics in their activity, but in practice the bulk of them does not remember any rules and does not recognize ethics as a footing of business, can be draw out. "