Organisational Ethics - A Case study review

Ethics, Society & The Organisations

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Ethics, grade: 85%, University of Strathclyde, 15 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The origin of the word 'ethics' is derived from the Greek word 'êthos' , which, in a more precise translation, might be better rendered as 'image'. The science of ethics, as it became established in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, was concerned with the search for absolute standards of conduct guiding decisions and actions, and was closely tied to the concept of duties derived from core values . Since ethics itself, as moral philosophy, set out to establish generally accepted standards of right and wrong, the word 'moral' became interchangeable with 'ethics', although the former originally referred to the act and the latter to the abstract principle from which the act was derived. In the meantime, 'being ethical or moral' has come to imply conforming with specific (generally acceptable) standards, whereby the initial agenda of establishing universally applicable moral principles has been replaced by the realisation that groups of people can also adhere to or deviate from a set of their own ethical standards. From this, it follows that such standards can be established by an individual, a corporation or a nation to help or guide decisions and actions. Schoen (1979 ) even sees the metaphors employed as vital to the framing of issues, since these guide both what is deemed to be a problem and the paradigms used in addressing them. This notion of defining problems and paradigms is clearly applicable to managers and leaders paid to make organisational decisions congruent with the organisational culture, whereby the choices they have to make may vary in terms of the perceived ethical solution selected from a range of alternative solutions. A general central part of management and organisations is its study of organisational culture, although this has, as yet, only received minimal attention - and even less in its relation to issues in moral psychology (Feldman, 2002 ). Yet since an individual's identity comprises stable mental and physical characteristics, it would seem that understanding individual personality is a crucial step in managing oneself and others effectively (Weiss, 2001 ). Organisational ethics often conjures up companies such as Enron, ImClone, Tyco and WorldCom, with their spectacular headlines on ethical failures at the very top of organisations. However, such executive management blowouts, while dramatic, are nonetheless rare.