Ethical Issues in Organizational Behavior Essay

Ethical decisions play a very important role in an organization. Ethics is the concept of good and bad behavior. Ethical behavior is governed by state, federal, and local laws. It is important for an organization to promote good moral choices and do everything in its power to prevent unethical behavior from taking place in the workplace. This can be achieved through continuous training and reinforcement of the desired behavior. Unethical behavior in the workplace can be detrimental to an organization because it is both costly and can ruin a good relationship between business associates. There are several influences on ethical behavior. They can range from the diversity of the workforce to the technology used in the organization to the quality that is now required of the products produced by an organization. Diversity can become an issue when a manager uses personal race related biases in organizational decisions. Technology can be an issue when proper training is not available to the employees in an organization. The fact that the employee is not trained properly makes them more likely to make a mistake or incapable of performing job duties. Quality can become an issue when an organization does provide its employee with the tools necessary to provide products within the specifications of their customers’ requirements. An employee is then forced to make a decision on whether or not to continue in the development of the less than required product. All of these influences to ethical behavior can be tracked back to a system breakdown. An organization can influence the ethical behavior of employees in several ways. First the organization can offer some kind of reward for behavior defined as ethical. This will give the employee reason to continue making the â€Å"right† or desired organizational behavior. Continuous training will enable the employees to efficiently perform specified job duties. It will also enable managers to clarify desired behavior and give the employee a sense of security and confidence. Management is primarily responsible for ensuring that the proper tools and training are available to all employees. Deming’s observations led him to believe that â€Å"the typical manager spends most of his or her time wrongly blaming and punishing individuals for system failure† (Kinicki, & Kreitner, 2009, pg. 11). His 85-15 rule is helpful in preventing a manager from jumping to conclusions and making an unethical decision. Using the principles of Total Quality management will also aide in influencing ethical behavior in the workplace. They are as follows: a) Do it right the first time to eliminate rework b) Listen to and learn from customers and employees ) Make continuous improvement an everyday matter d) Build teamwork, trust, and mutual respect These principles will add to the security and confidence that employees will get from continued training. An example of ethical issue being faced by an organization is the ethical, legal, and social issues derived from the Human Genome Project. This project is funded by the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). There are several ethical issues related to this project. One concern is fairness in the use of genetic information. It must be determined who should have access to the information and how the information should be used. Another ethical issue faced by funders of the Human Genome Project is privacy and confidentiality. It needs to be determined who owns and controls the findings from the project. Another ethical issue is the psychological impact and stigmatization. Before findings are made public, it needs to be determined how this information will affect an individual. The uncertainties that are tied to gene testing are another ethical issue that DOE and NIH are faced with. They have to decide if testing should be done even when treatment is not available. They have to decide if a parent has the authority to test their children for potential diseases. They must determine if the test are reliable and interpretable by members of the medical community. There are many other ethical decisions that must be made with the continued study of human genetics.