Academic literature on the topic 'Workplace and organisational ethics (excl. business ethics)'

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of budi, a concept incorporating moral values and intellect, in shaping the Malay workplace ethics and behaviour of the Malays. Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper investigating how existing knowledge of budi and Malay cultural traditions manifests and affects contemporary workplace practices. Findings – Although the origins of budi can be traced back to pre-Islamic Malay civilisation, its influence can still be found in contemporary workplace settings. For example, the hierarchical organisational structure and workplace etiquette that characterise Malay managerial practices are related to budi. At the same time, this paper also suggests that budi may potentially serve as a catalyst for certain less desirable work practices, including the greater importance attached to prioritising social relations over work performance. Originality/value – In analysing budi, the paper explores a largely overlooked cultural concept within management literature. Although the Malay world is a rapidly growing centre of economic and business activity, relatively little scholarly attention has been devoted to exploring the cultural underpinnings and foundations that shape and influence Malay managerial and workplace practices among Malays.

Workplaces are becoming increasingly diverse, and businesses constantly face the challenge of ensuring work ethics to strengthen competitiveness. Workplace ethics is affected not just by potential gains and losses of unethical action but also by employee morale, values and self-concept. The ethical reasoning process depends on both perception of what is ethical and the ability to justify unethical action in a given situation. In this study, we explore the role of individual, organisational and situational factors influencing the perceived degree of unethical behaviour at work. Individual socio-cultural factors include personal values, such as honesty, and socio-demographic factors, such as age, gender, education and tenure. Organisational factors are assessed through espoused values of honesty and responsibility. Finally, three situational factors are randomly introduced – low wage, boredom and perceived injustice. Two hundred and eight retail employees were surveyed to assess their personal values and the perceived degree of unethical behaviour at work. We found that honesty as a personal value changes ethical reasoning, especially when situational factors, such as low wage are introduced. Moreover, older employees tend to report more ethical behaviour in the workforce. We also concluded that declaring honesty and responsibility as organisational values could have a minor positive impact on ethical behaviour mitigating the impact of the introduced situational factors. Keywords: Socio-cultural factors, values, workplace diversity, business ethics, ethical reasoning

This article introduces the results of the first survey of Czech civil servants specifically targeting the domain of public ethics. The survey serves a double purpose: to provide data relevant for the development of a tailor-made ethics training programme for public officials, and to answer two research questions: (1) What are the main factors influencing the core values in Czech public administration? (2) Does the existence of ethics resources contribute to an improved ethical climate in the Czech public administration as perceived by public officials? The findings show that an ethical code is the most widespread, but often the only, ethics instrument implemented in Czech public administration and that the code is not used effectively. The results also confirm a positive but weak influence of the number of ethics resources on the perception of the existence of ethical problems, and a slight direct correlation between a higher number of resources and the perception of positive ethics development in the workplace. No support is found for the assertion that the more ethics resources are used by the organisation, the greater is the importance of the organisational culture for decision-making. This empirical research illustrates that - unlike in other countries of the former Eastern Bloc - ethics has been a low-priority agenda in Czech public administration and that enhancing ethical standards, and thus increasing citizens’ trust in public services, will be a long-term process. Leadership and leading by example, alongside ethics education and training, are the avenues to pursue.

AbstractIn view of the limited consideration for Afrocentric perspectives in organisational ethics literature, we examine Employee-Centred Corporate Social Responsibility (EC-CSR) from the perspective of Afrocentric employees’ social expectations. We posit that Afrocentric employees’ social expectations and the organisational practices for addressing these expectations differ from conventional conceptualisation. By focusing specifically upon the psychological attributes evolving from the fulfilment of employees’ social expectations, we argue that Afrocentric socio-cultural factors could influence perceived organisational support and perceived employee cynicism. We further draw upon social exchange theory to explore rational reciprocity (i.e. attitude and behaviour) evolving from the fulfilment and breach of employees’ social expectations at work. Contrary to the rational norm of reciprocity, we identify a reciprocity norm within which the breach of employees’ social expectations could in fact engender positive reciprocity rooted in esan reciprocity ideology—an ideology that emerged from the ethical tradition of the Yoruba people from Nigeria, West Africa. Overall, our paper elucidates the implications of Afrocentric peculiarities for employees’ social exchange within the African workplace, thus extending the present understanding in this regard.

Purpose Based on the research findings the authors derive propositions for further research to explore the role of safety and ethical leadership in enhancing health and safety performance within New Zealand companies. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach Based on quantitative and qualitative health and safety data collected by Börner in New Zealand and analysed in the (unpublished) Master Thesis of Lassowski “Supporting Aspects of Organisational culture on Occupational Health and Safety” (2014) the authors will examine in this paper the responses of company governance and senior leadership to reports made from front-line staff about their perception of the safety culture and (potential) threats to health and safety. Findings The data indicate that company governance and senior leadership are sometimes reluctant to give adequate responses to employee reporting and fail to take effective measures to protect people and the business. Research limitations/implications Directors and senior leaders need to be vigilant that the company systems remain compliant with Health and Safety legislation and are aligned with best practices in the sector/organisation. Reports from employees using company systems on a daily basis are vital to assure that those systems work as they should, and that action can be taken when (potential) threats to health and safety are reported. Originality/value The workplace has a significant influence on injury, illness, fatalities and threats to environmental, community and individual wellbeing and this influence can be positive or negative. The research explores the link between the ethics of organisational leadership and its influence on workplace health and safety climate and outcomes.

Purpose Employee dishonesty is problematic for businesses in general, particularly for retailers. The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyse selected factors associated with the perceived likelihood of dishonest behaviour among retail employees. Specifically, the role of three negative work outcomes – insufficient pay, boredom, and perceived injustice – is investigated, as well as the effect of individual values and espoused organisational values. Design/methodology/approach The sample consisted of 784 retail employees from six retail organisations located in Estonia and Latvia. A survey questionnaire that used manipulated scenarios of work outcomes and organisational values was administered. Findings The study concludes that perceived injustice produces more dishonesty than other negative work outcomes (insufficient pay and boredom), whereas boredom was a surprisingly strong trigger for the perceived likelihood of dishonest behaviour. Individual ethical values determined the perceived likelihood of dishonest behaviour as hypothesised while sensation-seeking values did not. Espoused organisational values had no significant effect on the perceived likelihood of dishonest behaviour. Practical implications The results imply that the breach of distributional and procedural justice simultaneously associates most with employee dishonesty, and retail employee selection is the key to curbing dishonest behaviour in the workplace. Originality/value The paper makes a contribution to behavioural ethics literature by studying dishonest employee behaviour in the post-communist context while addressing various forms of dishonest behaviour, in addition to stealing. Also, the effect of espoused organisational values has been scarcely studied before.

PurposeUnethical tone at the top (UTAT) carries a lot of risks and unsolicited results for both the people and companies. The purpose of this paper is to uncover the systematic differences in managers’ perception of UTAT based on their demographic characteristics, and subsequently to specify some useful recommendations to inform how companies can assist in increasing managers’ sensitivity to the harmful top-down practices and thus support ethicality in the workplace.Design/methodology/approachEight demographic factors that, based on prior findings from the literature, might play a role in varying perception of UTAT were examined on data from 772 management professionals working in diverse industries. The Kruskal-Wallis test statistics was utilised to infer significant differences in perceptions of UTAT among managers.FindingsFindings suggest that male managers tended to perceive UTAT as significantly less harmful than did their female counterparts. Similarly, top managers inclined to perceive UTAT as less detrimental than the middle and line management levels. Managers with higher tenure (10+ years of managerial experience) perceived UTAT as more detrimental in contributing to unethical leadership decisions and workplace culture. Respondents who have studied business-oriented programs perceived UTAT to be less harmful for the company than the non-business students. Interestingly, age, level of education, span of control and even the ethics training received during career were all found to be not relevant in this respect.Originality/valueBased on solid empirical findings this study fills the gap in literature on the tone at the top and helps in understanding what can be done in organisational practice to improve managers’ awareness of the damaging effects of UTAT and thus to minimise threats to an ethical workplace culture.

Purpose This study aims to demonstrate how critical realism (CR) can be used in spirituality at work (SAW) research and to provide a practical example of CR in SAW research. Design/methodology/approach CR is a philosophical meta-theory that allows the stratification of spirituality into different levels of reality, advocates for research methods matching the ontology of the level investigated and provides complementary methods of exploring this phenomenon’s causal power in social contexts. The authors present a study where CR was used to explain how and why SAW influences ethics in organisational contexts. Findings The results demonstrate that CR provides a useful approach to bridging the positivist-interpretivist difference in SAW research. Moreover, a CR approach helped explain the underlying conditions and causal mechanisms that power SAW to influence ethical decision-making and behaviour in the workplace. Originality/value While CR has been applied in the management literature, negligible SAW research has used this approach. That which exists is either conceptual or does not discuss methods of data analysis, or describe how critical realist concepts resulted in their findings. This paper addresses that lacuna. CR also provides value, as an alternative approach to SAW research, in that it allows the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods as complementary, not confrontational methods while providing a more integrated and deeper view of SAW and its effects.

Corporate governance is one of the most important differentiators of business that is distilled from an organisation’s culture, its policies and ethics, especially of the people running the business, and the way it deals with various stakeholders. It represents the relationship among stakeholders that is used to determine and control the strategic direction and performance of organisations. This article establishes the role of corporate governance as an enabler and explores the scope—by protecting valuations of a company, determining industrial competitiveness or differentiating a good mergers and acquisitions deal from a bad one—rather than the barrier it has become today. The article emphasises the sustainability and effective implementation of governance practices through self-regulation and voluntary adoption of ethical code of business conduct, which will naturally ensure compliance with every statutory law and guideline. Considering that the workforce today is multigenerational in an age of hyper-globalisation, one of the key tasks is to garner respect, acceptability and adherence to code of conduct by each employee. It further elaborates on the relevant regulatory laws and rules framed by the government, which act as a broader framework for calibrating the company-level ethical compass. The role of human resources (HR) is to embed corporate governance in all aspects of the business. This article dwells on the fact that HR is responsible for not just formulating code of conduct and policies, but also getting them embedded in spirit within the DNA of every employee. It encompasses various organisational and strategic interventions such as employee communication, effective control systems structuring, corporate sustainability, senior management selection, development and succession planning, international presence, diversity and inclusion mindset, setting the culture, promoting a safe workplace, etc. With the Companies Act in 2013 paving the way for a shift in mindset from a regime of control to that of liberalisation and self-regulation—something that the corporates needed to compete globally—HR plays a crucial role of being the enablers of change and not just ‘personnel management’.

IntroductionOne in six workers experience some form of mental health problems at work costing the UK economy an estimated £70 billion/year. Digital interventions provide low cost and easily scalable delivery methods to implement psychological interventions in the workplace. This trial tests the feasibility of implementing a self-guided 8-week digital cognitive behavioural therapy intervention for subthreshold to clinical depression and/or anxiety versus waitlist control (ie, life as usual) in the workplace.Methods and analysisFeasibility of implementation will be tested using a mixed-methods evaluation of the two-arm randomised waitlist-control trial. Evaluation will include examination of organisational buy-in, and the engagement of employees through the trial indicated by the completion of outcome measures. In addition, we also explore how participants use the platform, the appropriateness of the analysis both with reference to the outcome measures and linear modelling. Finally, we examine the acceptability of the intervention based on participants experiences using qualitative interviews. Assessments take place at baseline (T0), at 8 weeks post-treatment (T1), at short-term follow-up 4 weeks post-treatment (T2) and long-term follow-ups (6 and 12 months after-end of treatment). We will recruit from 1 July 2021 to 31 December 2021 for employees and self-employed workers with depression and anxiety symptoms (subclinical and clinical levels) who are not seeking or engaged in treatment at the time of the trial.Ethics and disseminationFull approval was given by the University of Warwick Biomedical and Research Ethics Committee (BSREC 45/20–21). The current protocol version is 2.8 (August 2021). Publication of results in peer-reviewed journals will inform the scientific, clinical and business communities. We will disseminate results through webinars, conferences, newsletter as well as a lay summary of results on the study website (mhpp.me).Trial registration numberISRCTN31161020.

This study examined the emerging debate on spirituality in the workplace. As spirituality gains impetus, organisations have proactively accommodated the needs of their multi-ethnic and multi-faith workforce and have started integrating spirituality into their policies. The study sought to gauge the employees and managers’ perceptions of the importance of spirituality in the workplace. Spirituality represents a complex phenomenon that embraces an awareness of others, coupled with a sense of fulfilment and values, which add meaning to life. Overall, a lack of clear policy and acknowledgment regarding spirituality within organisations is apparent. The extant literature suggests that spirituality as a research topic suffers from fragmentation, dearth, and confusion which sometimes makes it difficult to propose a comprehensive theory. The complexity and ambiguity of spirituality as a concept means it is often confused with religious rituals. Spirituality is not the same as religion, although religion can be the focus of an individual’s spirituality or the way in which an individual’s spirituality is recognised and expressed. Both spirituality and religion can operate independently from each other. As a result, many scholars have realised the need for a more unified interpretation of the term spirituality. Adopting a predominantly positivist stance, two organisations in England were surveyed. Using a purpose-designed questionnaire, a return of 628 was achieved, with a reliability of 0.87 (Cronbach Alpha). Analysis was undertaken as a data set using independent variables which related to biographical factors, including a person’s faith and their organisation. This was supported by qualitative data using semi-structured interviews with senior management in both organisations. Findings and analysis highlighted that employees did not feel comfortable discussing spirituality; nor did they feel it was appropriate to practise spirituality within the workplace. In their perceptions of spirituality policies, both organisations proffered initiatives that, in the absence of a coherent policy, employees struggled to accommodate employee spiritual needs. Overall, the findings revealed that the limited policies or procedures that were in place often left the employees ambivalent as to whether the organisation had any genuine interest in their spiritual well-being. Since employee spirituality is under-researched, this study investigated the nature of workplace spirituality to benefit academic research through expanding the knowledge in this area, to produce a model of spirituality. The study findings will led to new knowledge on spirituality that can assist in the formulation of suitable strategies to enhance employee spiritual well-being. This study is pertinent in the current economic recession, whereby employees of different ethnic backgrounds may feel vulnerable, with the possibility of spirituality manifesting itself in the workplace as a source of conflict. To address the issue of potential spiritual conflict, organisations will need to build high-trust relationships in the workplace.

Whistleblowing is a form of pro-social behaviour that occurs when a current or former employee reports organisational wrongdoing to any authority that is able to implement corrective action. While models of whistleblowing indicate that a number of social factors may influence an employee’s decision to blow the whistle, very little cognisance is given to the role of organisational trust in such situations. Since whistleblowing situations often pose problems for whistleblowers, organisational trust becomes an important facilitator for the decision to blow the whistle. This study explores whether organisational trust is an influencing social factor that may facilitate whistleblowing. It is found that organisational trust plays a significant role in decisions to blow the whistle. It shows in particular that when organisational trust exists, employees are more likely to blow the whistle, and secondly, that whistleblowing is more likely to take place internally rather than externally. Further, this study shows that in the absence of trust employees will not report organisational wrongdoing, although this finding also suggests that other social factors may impact on the decision not to blow the whistle. This dissertation argues that understanding the relationship between the two phenomena provides greater insight into how organisational trust may affect whistleblowing.
Prof. Tina Uys Dr. Neville Bews

The world has been facing unprecedented waves of financial crisis due to a number of challenging ethical issues and cultures within organisations, and ethical leadership and decision making amongst other things. Research has been undertaken to study the relationship between ethics and leadership. However, the assessment of interrelationships between specific ethical context dependent and independent variables are yet to be undertaken within a multi-cultural multi-industry context. Independent variables are conceptualised as organisational culture, ethical organisational climate; mediating variables are conceptualised as ethical leadership and decision making, and internal and external workplace pressures. Dependent variables are conceptualised as organisational citizenship behaviour, employee ethical behaviour and conduct, and perceived employee performance. This study examines these dynamics within a conceptual research model using a macro-meso-micro framework and establishes the interrelationships as well as mediating effects on organisational citizenship behaviour, employee ethical behaviour and conduct, and perceived employee performance. Out of an initial sample of 526, a total of 523 participants of varying backgrounds working in ‘large’ organisations across diverse industries in Mauritius (with a population of 2,534 ‘large’ establishments) were subject to empirical study. A quantitative study was performed which employed correlation, multiple regression, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis and model fit assessments. The outcomes of the study show that organisational culture and ethical organisational climate (as macro independent variables) jointly influence the dependent variables both directly and indirectly to varying degrees. It was also found that ethical leadership and decision making, and internal and external workplace pressures (as meso variables) have statistically significant mediating effects on the dependent variables of organisation citizenship behaviour and perceived employee performance. The model proved to have a good fit and can be adopted as a guiding model for the business and research communities. The study also helps to better understand the prevailing state of ethical climate, practices, and workplace pressures affecting employees’ ethical stance as well as the key ethics related actions that are critical for implementation as evidenced empirically in Mauritius.
Graduate School of Business Leadership
D.B.L.