the ethics of organisational behaviour and...

The ethics of organisational behaviour and management

4th Session

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Topics

• Ethical contents of managerial decisions.

• Ethic filters.

• Social sensibility.

• Ethical aspects in motivation management.

• The ethical responsibility of the individual.

• Rational risk-taking.

• Business secret and its protection.

Ethical contents of managerial decisions

• The managerial ethics goes far beyond the simplistic schema: do not steal, do not cheat, do not waste, and don’t go to bed with the secretary.

• What ethical questions arise with the responsability?

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The ethical dimensions of the management

• The most of the ethical decisions have far reaching conseqvences.

• The managerial decisions and actions and the results of the measures often do not end with the immediate consequences.

• The moral issues, carry a number of alternatives and the solution can be assessed independently: they give different results in terms of economic benefits, however they have different social-economic consequences as well.

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The ethical dimensions of the management 2.

• Most ethical decisions have mixed conseqvences. Often the economic and social requirements are clashing.

• Most managerial ethical decisions have personal aspects as well.

• The introduction of the just in time production management system for examle it is always increasing the productivity, however some jobs became automatically unnecessairy (warehouse, internal handling).

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Example

• In the Mátra mountain it would be possible to extract carbon with opencast mining.

• To set up the mine would require the liquidation of a small settlement.

• Would it be right to liquidate the village, and relocate its habitants, old people among them from their familiar environment , to split up families and relocate the family graves?

• Would there the benefits of the new mine: like new jobs, contribution to the social well-being balance the harm done for the inhabitants of the settlement?

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The ethical dimensions of the management 3.

• To take an appropriate decision requires a high level of ethical awarness from the part of the leader (or decision takers). – Every responsability towards the stakeholders

should be assessed: • What are the responsabilities towards the emplyees, the

suppliers, the banks, the dealers, the small and big consumer groups, the owners, the society (the environment and its livings).?

• The business ethics is part of the business decisions because of the deliberation of utilitarian aspects as well.

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• One way to take into account the moral considerations is to build in as a controll in decision-making process.

• The decision-maker considers just the ethical alternatives as possible solutions for a problem.

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• It should be considered the conseqvences of the decision on ourselves, our collegues, the organisation, other stakeholders involved and the natural environment.

• In the decisions taken in this way, the moral considerations are already integrated. The possible alternatives are filtered through the filter of our ethical norms.

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Ethical filters

• The set of alternatives that are on the base of a multilevel ethically responsible decison-taking should obey first

– the ethical, then

– the effective and finally

– the feasible requirement.

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Ethical filters 2.

• In the ethical filter – the end-result of the alternatives is based on the consideration of the ethical aspects.

• In the effectiveness filter – the alternatives that effectively achieve the aim are listed.

• In the feasibility filter – the alternatives that are obeying the technical, economic, profitabilty, organizational, and human requirements are considered.

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Social sensitiveness

• The social value system of the leader is the hierarchical system of social motives in part herited and in other part learned during his/her life.

• The social behaviour is expressed in socially sensible decisions.

• The social behavior of a leader and its effectivity depends on the level of its social sensibility, ethical preferences and creativity.

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Social sensitiveness 2.

• The changing social environment should be taken into consideration in the operation of a business.

• The social sensitivity could be observed on the level and manner the social goals are part of the company’s strategy and the company is engaging in solving social problems.

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• Involves aims to – Set up product safety,

– Use of technological impact assessments

– The elimination or decreasing of the environmental impact of the products and production

– Reuse of the products and wastages

– The better information of the user environment about all of these,

– Supporte the goals of active social movements.

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• It is the primary and well-understood interest of a business to have employees capable of high quality work, satisfied with their job and working conditions, that in case of an efficient work can count on their stabile working-place.

• In our country a prominent role gets the strenghtening of the stability-sense of the empoyees.

• The participation of the employees in the decision making process is an expression of the power of the management and the predominance of the collective spirit.

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Ethical dimensions in motivation management

– It is the task of the leader to build up a good athmosphere – which correlates with motivational management. Just a good athmosphere makes possible to set up team-spirit and cohesivity.

– In order that an individual becomes an organic part of the community and shares the organisation’s goals, should be content with his work and working conditions.

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Ethical dimensions in motivation management 2.

– The achivement of satisfaction is based on several aspects that could differ from one person to another.

– The main aspects for the organisation and management are the following:

• The tasks should be in line with the personality aspects od the individual.

• load (amount of work), the intensity (as opposed to quality of work), self-reliance, creativity, commitment, responsibility, fairness, loyalty, openness, balance, understanding and assessment of the professional and general education.

–

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• It is nessessary to take into consideration the skills and competencies, for the best suit of person for a job. – It is important that the fulfillement of the tasks to

require expertize and to motivate its further development, together with the acquisition of new skills and competencies.

– Thus the monotony is targeted and the diversity of the work is assured. The need for creativity could contribute to performance increase.

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• The task of a successful manager is to motivate adequately its valuable employees.

– In the meantime it is a responsable burden to handle the worst achievers.

– Should offer possibility for the creatives, sort out those who want to progress and assist them in their learning process.

– Should get rid of those who are distroying the corporate athmosphere.

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• From the perspective of individual it is also important to measure and assess the results. – It is necessary that the result of the scheduled task can be

measured, its quality standards can be established in an exact way.

– This knowledge provides an indication of the individual internal correction requirements, to correct the deficiencies and strengthen individual skills developments.

– The fealing of the importance of the task contributes to the development of responsability.

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• It is important – To provide individual freedom in choosing the

operation mode while fulfilling the task

– To privide with information the employee on the operation of the company, its problems, its future aims and the imert them in the decision-making

– Ensuring fair income,

– creating job security,

– ensure uniform working conditions and compliance with labor laws.

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• Respect for the human rights and dignity (freedom of expression, freedom of speech, equality, non-discrimination, privacy, etc.).

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The ethical responsability of the individual

• Is responsible for his/her work

– There are certain expectations regarding experts, accountants, doctors, teachers, judges.

• The decision involves the ethical responsability of decision-maker.

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The ethical responsability of the individual 2.

• The market environment assesses the behaviour (ethical norms included) of an organisation based on its productums (products or services) and manifestations (contracts, warranties, use of softwares)

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Taking rational risk

• The management behavior caracteristics are seasible in the strategic goals and the manner they are implementet.

• There are many strategic approaches.

• 2 main groups: businesses aiming at adaptive and initiative strategic goals

• Those two rarely express theselves in this clear manner, usually we can talk about the alloy of those two.

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1. Adaptive strategy

• The company aiming at adaptive strategy is avoiding the risky decisions.

• It concentrates on an uninterrupted market operation, not to loose market position and revenues.

• It attempts go mantain stability by using behaviors that proved to be working previously.

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1. Adaptive strategy 2.

• Such management is not looking for significant changes, it is conflict-avoiding. It intends to comply the environmental challenges by dealing with conflicts between the organization and the environment and within the organization.

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2. The initiative strategy

• Its determining elements are the change and growth.

• This management is taking risky decision that are ameliorating its market positions.

• The key of the business development is the innovation.

– Meaning research and development, logistics, new product and service introduction ...

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2. The initiative strategy 2.

• This strategy formulates that everything that bring success to a business should be renewed: – The informatics and command

– The inner athmosphére and the whole company mentality

– Caracteristics of products, technologies and services

– Work place activity

– The whole management and finance system.

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Conclusions

• A careful anayses shoud decide if the company should undertake risks and how much risk is adequate.

• The dynamically changing market environment offers continous challenge to the organisations.

– In such conditions not to take risks could be similarly harmful that to take to high risks.

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Business secret and its protection

• Business sevrets are constituent parts of businesses.

• The business secrets are properties of businesses.

• According to the 1996. LVII. Law’s definition:

– „Business secret is all fact, information, solution or data of a business activity, that the stakeholder has a right and stake to keep in secret and for which it took the necessairy provisions”.

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Business secret and its protection 2.

• Every business has secrets that cannot be made public for the stake of the business.

• They cannot be shared with the competitors.

• Some of those secrets are time-dependents. Meaning that with time they loose importance.

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• A business secret can be. – A new invention, the documentation of a new

product or

– production process

– The market strategy of a product

– The planned advertaising campaign elements or its technical and methodical elements

– The price-strategy, financial construction, network system: supliers, consumers, the economic, financial and credit conditions

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– Informtions that are made for inner use, if they get out to the competitors, they are reducing the competitivity of a company

• It is unethical to acquire and use business secrets, however it happens quite often.

• There are rules regulating the use of business secrets. – An aim of those is that the employee to use those just for the

stake of its own company.

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• A protection tool is the inner discipline, the compliance with the rules.

• They define the business and marketing documents, technical documentation, engineering planechanges, lab tests, the measurement data, how to handle the company's employees to the expected behavior, the accessible software and computer databases, if necessary, the protection of company offices and buildings.

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