Unethical practices are common in the workplace; it’s difficult to decide when you should put your foot down :-
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Assume you are working for one of the leading companies in its field, proud of your job, proud of your employer. Suddenly, the top management unveils a plan that seems to throw corporate governance to the winds. There is a huge public outcry. Overnight, your company becomes the Enron of its era. Morale plummets. Shareholders ask questions. People start looking for jobs. In desperation, your CEO invokes corporate loyalty.

Now, what do you do?

“Head for the exit,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh. “Stick on and you too will be tainted.” Of course, he adds some riders. First, you need to get yourself a job. (In the current environment in India — where pink slips are floating around like confetti — you probably have to grit your teeth and carry on.) Second, examine the possibility of your top management getting the boot. If you are not too high up, this may even be an opportunity to move up the ladder.

Recent events in corporate India are bringing ethical issues to the forefront. More and more people are being asked to decide where exactly they stand in such debates. The response, unfortunately, seems to depend on the individual rather than the issues.

In his book The Courageous Follower: Standing Up to and for Our Leaders, Ira Chaleff says that the rank and file in an organisation can be divided into four categories — implementer, resource, individualist and partner. Not everybody can become a courageous follower and challenge the leader; only the partner can. This doesn’t necessarily have to be in confrontational mode. But you must always be prepared to lose the argument and lose your job to boot.

Be frank with yourself. See what category you fit into. Do you have the gumption to rise from, say, being an implementer to a partner? Very often this may take a change in thinking. And, if climbing the corporate ladder to the very top is not really your scene, it may not be worth it.

But the implementer still has to face up to the question: what happens when you are asked to implement something that runs contrary to your sense of ethics? Even more tricky is when you don’t have to implement anything; just accept what is going on around you.

“Take the case of a company using substandard inputs,” says Singh. “It becomes a big thing when you are making infant food. But if it is charity for the dispossessed in Darfur, standards are relaxed quite a bit.” It is difficult to decide when you should turn whistle-blower.

Why do basically ethical people accept unethical behaviour from others in their organisation and turn unethical themselves by winking at what is going on around them? A January 2008 Harvard Business School paper titled See No Evil: When We Overlook Other People’s Unethical Behaviour attempts some answers.

“Even good people sometimes act unethically without their own awareness,” say the authors Francesca Gino, Don A. Moore and Max H. Bazerman. “First, there is a tendency for people to overlook unethical behaviour in others when recognising such behaviour would harm them. Second, people might readily ignore unethical behaviour when others have an agent do their dirty work for them. Third, gradual moral decay leads people to grow comfortable with behaviour to which they would otherwise object. Fourth, the tendency to value outcomes over processes can lead us to accept unethical processes for far too long.”

Personal interest often decides what you consider unethical organisational behaviour. Singh gives a simple example. If two of your subordinates are having an affair, it’s probably okay with you. If the boss is having an affair with someone several levels junior, you start wondering about his judgement. But you take no action. But if the person who is competing with you for the next promotion is having an affair with your confidential secretary, that is certainly not on. Your rival is trying to find out your secrets and weaknesses. How dirty can you play?

In the corporate world today, the affair itself does not matter; ethics seem to depend on how an act affects you personally.

FACING THE MUSIC:-

What song would you sing if your boss asked you to do something unethical? (%)

Sound of silence 22.4

Sound of your goodbye 26.7

Sound off 50.9

Source: Online poll by Workplace911

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