“A suggested approach for Enhancing Ethical Behavior in the Work place”

The key to enhance ethical behavior lies in understanding reasons how and why employees

engage themselves in ethical or unethical behaviors. There are two main reasons why employees engage

themselves in unethical behavior: First, they do not know what an ethical choice would be in certain

situation and second, even if they know what an ethical choice would be, they still want to act unethically

due to different reasons. By implementing a step-by-step process that would address abovementioned two

scenarios, an organization can improve ethical behaviors in its employees.

In order to encourage ethical behavior among employees, an organization should communicate

clearly to the employees on how to make an ethical choice, put in place positive and negative

reinforcement measures, and change organizational environment to encourage ethical behavior. An

organization should have an ethics education center, which provides necessary and continuing ethical

education to the employees. Employees should be able to discuss their ethical concerns to this center and

be able to resolve situations involving ethical dilemmas. This ensures that employees have a clear idea of

how high an organization’s ethical standards are and that they do not have any ambiguity, while making

ethical decisions. Second, the organization should have in-built system that punishes those employees

who engage themselves in unethical behavior. Their unethical behavior should be negatively discussed

among other employees of the organization to further discourage this kind of future behavior. On the

other hand, employees, who engaged themselves in highly ethical behavior, should be recognized in front

of other employees and be rewarded by monetary and nonmonetary means. Finally, certain organizational

factors that increase the risk of unethical behavior should be eliminated as much as possible. For example,

certain compensation scheme, extremely unreasonable pressure from upper management, no control

measures in place, availability of opportunities to commit an unethical act, etc. On the other hand,

different measures such as open communication between employees and upper management, reasonable

goal setting, continuing education, access to ethics hotline reduced the chances that an employee will

engage himself into unethical behavior.

There are many ways an organization can enhance ethical behavior at work place. The key

measures are clear and effective communication and positive and negative reinforcements in place to

ensure continuity of ethical behaviors.