Relationship between Corporate Ethics and Organizational Culture (original) (raw)

Asia Pacific Management Review 15 Relationship between Employee Perceptions of Corporate Ethics and Organizational Culture: An Exploratory Study

Organizational research in the last two decades has paid greater attention to the topic of culture as a potential key or critical lever for better understanding of organizations. Culture has drawn attention to the long-neglected, subjective, or "soft" side, of organizational life. In functionalist thinking, culture is considered a component of an integrated social system which promotes the effectiveness of the organization and the well-being of all its stakeholders. Organizational culture refers to the assumptions, beliefs, goals, knowledge and values that are shared by organizational members. Culture represents the high-information "ideal factors" in a system or organization that exert significant and partly independent influence on human events. When an individual is faced with an ethical dilemma, his or her value system will color the perception of the ethical ramifications of the situation. This study, then, seeks to explore and have a basic understanding of the relationship between such value systems and employees' perceptions of organizational ethics. Analysis of a survey of 136 MBA students who are managers in Philippine companies regarding their firms' culture and their organizational members' perceptions of ethics reveals that there is a slightly significant relationship between particular cultural characteristics and employee perceptions of organizational ethics. This finding provides modest support for the theory that organizational values are associated with organizational members' perception of ethical business dilemmas. It likewise confirms the suggestion in the literature that organizations take on various cultural characteristics along the different stages of their life cycle, and that individual values and ethical perceptions do interact with the organizations' value systems.

Relationship between Employee Perceptions of Corporate Ethics and Organizational Culture: An Exploratory Study

Asia Pacific Management Review

Organizational research in the last two decades has paid greater attention to the topic of culture as a potential key or critical lever for better understanding of organizations. Culture has drawn attention to the long-neglected, subjective, or "soft" side, of organizational life. In functionalist thinking, culture is considered a component of an integrated social system which promotes the effectiveness of the organization and the well-being of all its stakeholders. Organizational culture refers to the assumptions, beliefs, goals, knowledge and values that are shared by organizational members. Culture represents the high-information "ideal factors" in a system or organization that exert significant and partly independent influence on human events. When an individual is faced with an ethical dilemma, his or her value system will color the perception of the ethical ramifications of the situation. This study, then, seeks to explore and have a basic understanding of ...

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR: A STRATEGIC STANDPOINT

What constitutes ethical behaviour lies in a " grey zone " where clearcut right versus wrong and good versus bad dichotomies may not always exist. This paper is an empirical study on organizational culture and ethical behaviour from a strategic standpoint. Its objectives were to determine if there is a significant relationship between organizational culture and ethical behaviour and if there is a significant relationship between organizational culture and employees' values. The participants of the study were employees of selected public and private organizations in Lagos, Nigeria. The selection was through simple random sampling technique. The sample size was 92 respondents. Two (2) hypotheses were formulated and tested using regression analysis. Hypothesis one revealed that there is significant relationship between organizational culture and ethical behavior; the coefficient of determination (R 2) is 0.370. It shows that 37% of the variation or change in ethical behaviour is caused by variation in organizational culture. Hypothesis two also shows that the coefficient of determination (R 2) is 0.423. It means that 42.3% of the variation or change in employees' values is caused by variation in organizational culture, which connotes that organizational culture has significant relationship with employees' values. The study recommends that management should constantly review its organizational culture to be sure that it remains strong on the vision of the founders of the organisation, because organizational culture can be eroded as more people come into the organization with their various individual behaviours and values.

Organisational Culture and Ethical Behaviour: A Strategic Standpoint

What constitutes ethical behaviour lies in a “grey zone” where clearcut right versus wrong and good versus bad dichotomies may not always exist. This paper is an empirical study on organizational culture and ethical behaviour from a strategic standpoint. Its objectives were to determine if there is a significant relationship between organizational culture and ethical behaviour and if there is a significant relationship between organizational culture and employees’ values. The participants of the study were employees of selected public and private organizations in Lagos, Nigeria. The selection was through simple random sampling technique. The sample size was 92 respondents. Two (2) hypotheses were formulated and tested using regression analysis. Hypothesis one revealed that there is significant relationship between organizational culture and ethical behavior; the coefficient of determination (R2) is 0.370. It shows that 37% of the variation or change in ethical behaviour is caused by variation in organizational culture. Hypothesis two also shows that the coefficient of determination (R2) is 0.423. It means that 42.3% of the variation or change in employees’ values is caused by variation in organizational culture, which connotes that organizational culture has significant relationship with employees’ values. The study recommends that management should constantly review its organizational culture to be sure that it remains strong on the vision of the founders of the organisation, because organizational culture can be eroded as more people come into the organization with their various individual behaviours and values. Key Words: Organization culture, ethical behaviour, strategic standpoint, employees’ values, leadership

The Role of Corporate Culture in Business Ethics

In difficult financial times, companies face various moral issues to try to keep up with their competitors. Although these issues have a direct impact on employee decision making, businesses rarely address how employees should assess the ethics of their actions and incorporate ethics into their decisions. Often this can be alleviated by creating and maintaining a corporate culture with a focus on ethics. Corporate culture is often considered to be both a source of various problems and the basis for solutions and is certainly a factor that determines how people behave in an organization. The role of management in the organizational culture is important as it both acts as a role model for the employees and can also directly influence the behavior and culture to improve organizational performance. Of course there are better methods that management can use to incorporate ethics into the corporate culture or increase the likelihood that its employees will act ethically and these methods are explored.

Effects on culture on business ethics

2023

This paper explains the meaning of organisational culture and tells us that it is made up of elements such as values, beliefs, norms, practices, stories and symbols that have been brought in the organisation by the founders of the organisation. This concept is followed by the explanation of an individual’s perspectives and what factors are considered by one to make decisions. This and most important concept are of ethical decision making wherein, we see that the moral intensity varies from person to person and if the idea of decision making is affected by the other concepts under discussion. The main objective of the paper is to find if the organisational culture has an effect on the individual’s perspectives which might affect or might not affect an individual’s decision making taking into consideration ethical or unethical decisions. Thereby, we perform the research on these particular concepts which tells us that an individual might get affected by the organisational culture but has motivational factors to work upon, therefore, not getting affected or on the other hand, they might get affected and take decisions which are unethical, or which are against their morals or beliefs. Hence, we decipher the reasons and results of how the culture affects the ethical decision making of an individual.

Impact of culture on Business Ethics

2011

Businesses in global world are interconnected with each other and practices at organizations for the compliance of business purpose. Organization cannot survive in isolation. The survival of organization depends upon the integration of business codes with the societal ethics and combinely format into an adjoined ethical practices prevailing saturate in market. Business ethics are gaining importance day by day which results into more saturation of business practices. The area of focus in this study is to investigate the effect of culture on ethics. Results proved in light of prior research that culture significantly effect on business ethics. Therefore it is very important need to give awareness to the employees so that firms can follow the ethics codes for doing business in good ethical ways.

Explaining Ethical Culture in the Organization: A Theory on the Role of Ethical Leadership in Humanistic Organizational Culture

DLSU Research Congress 2018 Proceedings, 2018

It is no longer enough that an organization exists to earn profits: more than good numbers to show, companies are also now looking into adopting organizational culture that incorporates a humanistic approach. This paper seeks to identify the motivating factors that contribute in creating an ethical organizational culture. Ethical leadership plays an important role in setting the ethical climate of the company. On the other hand, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) or the employees' voluntary commitment within an organization creates an avenue to sustain an ethical organizational culture. The practice of kagandahang-loob, a value ingrained in almost all Filipinos, moderates the effect of OCB on ethical organizational culture. This paper seeks to explain the constructs mentioned from positivist perspective.

A corporate culture pattern to manage business ethics

International Journal of Value-Based Management, 2002

Within the general frame of proposals for an adequate management of business ethics, this paper is based on the vision of corporate culture as a pattern to achieve such purpose. If we consider ethics as a specific value of corporate culture, we may resort to the mechanism of cultural change and implementation in order to manage ethics. Despite the difficulties it entails in terms of time and money investment, this procedure is one of the safest ways to reach ethical values which are known, shared and then practiced by all the members of a corporation, whatever the category. From this central standpoint, and basing ourselves on our own proposal for the management of culture, we shall describe which specific steps must be taken in order to achieve a set of ethical values which are both realistic and furthermore shared by all collaborators of an organization.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR

This paper examines two different but related concepts that are part of modern organization. Organizations operate with societies and are by virtue of their existence expected to be morally right, correct and defined. The paper examines organizational culture and four outlooks on culture and performance to demonstrate their interaction. It then looks at the organizational behaviour. Definition of terms Organizational culture Giberson et al (2009) define organizational culture as a collective phenomenon emerging from organizations' members' beliefs and social interactions, containing shared values, mutual understandings, patterns of beliefs and behaviours that tie individuals in an organization together over time. The beliefs and assumptions that are considered valid or effective are passed down through the organization and taught to new members as the way they should perceive, feel and act in the organization. It guides how things are done in an organization and indicates what should be important to the employees. It helps explain what happens in organizations since the behaviours within the company should be consistent (O'Donnell and Boyle, 2008). Organizational Behaviour Organizational behaviour is the study about how people feel, think and act in an organization and consequently how they are affected by the activities within the organization (Thomson, 2005). It is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and structure have on behaviour within organization. It is the study and application of knowledge about how people act within organizations. It applies broadly to the behaviour of people in all types of organizations, such as business, government, schools and services organizations. OB covers three determinants of behaviour in organizations: individuals, groups, and structure.