Journal articles 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.

What does it mean to be a professional? What sort of values, knowledge and relationships do we consider essential to become a professional? How does thinking about what professionalism is and could become contribute to the work and organisation of hospitality? This brief insight will provide a synopsis of a conceptual article that endeavoured to open up our understandings and opportunities for the concept of professionalism within hospitality [1]. The article was a conceptual discussion piece, aiming to critically examine understandings of being professional and what it could become for the hospitality sector. An organisational communication perspective was adopted to highlight how wider social discourses, relationships and language communicate and construct particular ways of being for understanding self, communities and organisations within society. The article also highlights the role of communication to achieve identification for the sector. The hospitality industry has been plagued by negative media attention around the tensions between low pay and finding the right staff with the required skills [1]. Previous research has illustrated that many graduates and prospective employees do not envisage the sector as a legitimate job or long-term career prospect [2]. To reverse these problems, a consideration of the meaning of work and aiming for professionalism in the sector has been identified as one possible solution. The concept of work can be communicated and interpreted in different ways. Perhaps your first thought of ‘work’ is that ‘it pays the bills and has to be done’ – so an element of compulsory drudgery is associated to this first thought. It is fair to say then, that the concept of work can include both negative and positive aspects. Considering the concept more broadly, we can see this negative association is not always the case. The work involved in maintaining and doing certain leisure activities, such as dog training and gardening is not always exclusively negative. Within the concept of work there are certain conditions that negate the negative association. In Cockburn-Wootten’s [1] conceptual article, this argument was made to change the association and avoid traditional disciplinary managerial tactics. She discusses previous organisational communication research that has identified that certain workplace cultures develop employees who enjoy their job, gain strong identification and commitment, and feel their work provides meaning and dignity to their lives [3]. The conceptual article argues that a critical communication perspective highlights opportunities to reconsider professionalism for the sector – identifying hospitality as meaningful, valued and more than just work. ‘Professionalism’ is an ambiguous term, but certain principles are always seen as essential in any of its definitions; these include trust, knowledge, ethics and character (ethos) [1]. Professionalism secures certain employment conditions, such as a higher level of autonomy, status in the wider community and collegiality, and importantly, employees regulate themselves to these values. Professionalism provides employees with “a sense of dignity in work, through self-worth, status and meaning” [1]. Communicating the values, practices and qualifications deemed the essential characteristics of a professional are crucial to achieve this sense of meaning for employees [1]. Effective organisational employee training, on-the-job support processes, clear ethical expectations and values need to be embedded to help create identification with the concept of professionalism. All this has typically seen business outcomes such as committed employees, lower turnover rates, and attracting prospective staff with the right skills – all of which contribute to an authentic and excellent hospitality service climate. To conclude, the article calls for critical consideration about professionalism’s contribution to the work and organisation of hospitality. Importantly, to achieve identification with the sector, we need a deeper understanding about the role of communication “to reconstruct individuals” and create meaningful work [1]. Suggestions in the article include a consideration of the how managers facilitate (or not) the workplace culture. Secondly, greater collaboration and dissemination of knowledge, for instance between academics and industry practitioners, would enhance the sector. Rarely does this happen in a reciprocal manner, for example with industry role models working with and within academia [4]. A final note is that being critical aware and reflective, particularly as we educate the next generation of managers, opens us up to the possibilities for ethical transformations that can tackle the current depressing turnover and employment conditions. Read the original article here: 10.1386/hosp.2.2.215_1 Corresponding author Cheryl Cockburn-Wootten can be contacted at: cwootten@waikato.ac.nz References (1) Cockburn-Wootten, C. Critically Unpacking Professionalism in Hospitality: Knowledge, Meaningful Work and Dignity. Hospitality & Society 2012, 2 (2), 215–230. https://doi.org/10.1386/hosp.2.2.215_1 (2) Gebbels, M.; Pantelidis, I. S.; Goss-Turner, S. Towards a Personology of a Hospitality Professional. Hospitality & Society 2019, 9 (2), 215–236. https://doi.org/10.1386/hosp.9.2.215_1 (3) Lammers, J. C.; Garcia, M. A. Exploring the Concept of “Profession” for Organizational Communication Research: Institutional Influences in a Veterinary Organization. Management Communication Quarterly 2009, 22 (3), 357–384. https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318908327007 (4) Cockburn-Wootten, C.; McIntosh, A. J.; Smith, K.; Jefferies, S. Communicating across Tourism Silos for Inclusive Sustainable Partnerships. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 2018, 26 (9), 1483–1498. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2018.1476519

AbstractResearch into spirituality and its impact on the work environment has been bourgeoning. In an attempt to explore the role of Islamic spirituality in the workplace, this study examines the influence of Islamic spirituality on job satisfaction and organisational commitment through work ethics. Data are obtained by an online Likert-scaled questionnaire survey based on one thousand Muslim employees from various economic sectors in Indonesia and analysed through structural equation modelling (SEM). The findings demonstrate that Islamic spirituality positively influences job satisfaction and organisational commitment as two dimensions of work attitudes and that work ethics mediate that influence. There is also evidence that job satisfaction positively influences organisational commitment, but work ethics does not moderate that influence. The findings related to the role of work ethics, which mediates the effect of Islamic spirituality on job satisfaction and organisational commitment, can be considered the contribution of this study.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of Islamic work ethics (IWEs) on the job satisfaction, commitment and loyalty among the bank employees in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach Data for this study was collected using the purposive sampling from 354 bank employees of Azad Jammu and Kashmir region. Findings The findings of this study support all the three proposed hypotheses, with IWEs demonstrating significant positive relationships with job satisfaction, organisational commitment and employee loyalty. Practical implications Because of the nature of operations, banks need energetic employees who can participate actively in work activities. The implementation of IWEs enables banks to improve their employees’ satisfaction, commitment and loyalty, which will benefit the organisation in the long term through improved performance. Originality/value By encouraging the adoption of IWEs, organisations can increase job satisfaction, employee’s commitment and loyalty in the workplace, especially in an Islamic banking context. Therefore, managers should strengthen the mutual understanding among employees regarding IWE principles. They should be consistently applied and disseminated by Islamic banks’ management in the form of a formal code of ethics that applies to all actions within the organisation. Besides, this study contributes in terms of divine command theory which was yet to be tested with employee’s behaviour. Loyalty was another behavioural attribute which is providing novelty while testing with IWEs in banking context.

Abstract Corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays an important role in promoting workplace ethics. However, most research has focused on CSRs’ performance or favourable performance-related behaviour outcomes. Little is known about how individual employees perceive CSR and how this affects their ethical behaviour. This research examines how employees' perceived corporate social responsibility (PCSR) facilitates their ethical behaviour. Specifically, we hypothesise that PCSR influences employee ethical behaviour by enhancing employees' organisational commitment. The relationship between employees' commitment and ethical behaviour is contingent on their co-workers' ethical behaviour. The hypothesised relationships were assessed using partial least squares structural equation modelling with a sample of 300 employees from ‘The Ghana Club 100’ firms. Our findings suggest that employee commitment serves as an effective mechanism through which employees' perception enhances their ethical behaviour. The findings also show that the weaker the co-workers' ethical behaviour, the stronger the relationship between employee commitment and ethical behaviour. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

PurposeWith the growing demand for ethical standards in the prevailing business environment, ethical leadership has been under increasingly more focus. Based on the social exchange theory and social learning theory, this study scrutinized the impact of ethical leadership on the presentation of ethical conduct by employees through the ethical climate. Notably, this study scrutinised the moderating function of the person-organisation fit (P-O fit) in relation of ethical climate and the ethical conduct of employees.Design/methodology/approachTo evaluate the research hypotheses, two-wave data were collected from 295 individuals who are currently employed in various Iraqi organizations (i.e. manufacturing, medical and insurance industries).FindingsIn line with the hypotheses, the outcomes from a sample of 295 workers working in different Iraqi entities exhibited a positive relation between the ethical behaviour of leaders and the ethical conduct of employees in the ethical climate. Moreover, it was observed that the P-O fit of employees moderated the relationship between ethical climate and the ethical conduct of employees such that the relationship was more robust for those with a high P-O fit in comparison to those with a low P-O fit.Research limitations/implicationsThe primary limitation of this study is in the data, which was obtained from a single source. Although the study conducted two surveys and utilised a mediation and moderation variables model that was less likely to be influenced by common method bias (CMB) (Podsakoff et al., 2012), one cannot completely rule out CMB. Apart from the potential effects of the CMB, the consistency of the empirical findings could have also been compromised since self-reported data were utilised in measuring ethical behaviour, which can be a very complex and sensitive issue. For this reason, the social desirability response bias cannot be ruled out completely. When possible, future studies must gather data from multiple sources. Furthermore, supervisors must evaluate the ethical behaviour of employees. Another limitation was that the findings of this study were based on a sample in a Middle Eastern cultural context such as in Iraq. Perhaps, the particular cultural features of this context, which encompassed, among other things, a strong adherence to religious values (Moaddel, 2010), could have influenced the findings of this study. It is true that the effects of differences (P–O fit) are highly likely to replicate across cultural contexts (Triandis et al., 1988). However, it can be seen that further studies are needed to evaluate the context-sensitivity of these findings (Whetten, 2009) by analysing other cultures, where the importance of religiosity is on the decline (i.e. in Western countries, Ribberink et al., 2018) or where the cultural features are very much different from those that apply to Iraq. Lastly, other external factors were not taken into account by this study as it tried to explain ethical behaviour. Ethics is a highly complex subject and is influenced by numerous variables at the organisational, individual and external environment levels. Thus, caution must be observed when making inferences from the present study which, to a certain degree, offered a simplified version of ethical behaviour by concentrating on a few variables such as the Arab culture's traditional ideology, which dominates even science (Abu Khalil, 1992). In addition, there are the political conflicts in the Middle Eastern cultural context such as what is happening in Iraq (Harff, 2018). Thus, it is important to include such aspects in future researches.Practical implicationsIn terms of management, the findings send a clear signal to those in the upper echelon that, without ignoring the issue of ethics in organizations, employees are a critical aspect to be taken into account to encourage ethical behaviour at the workplace. This study has important practical implications. First, this study determined that ethical leadership (here, of the supervisors) positively influences the behaviour of subordinates (refers to the supervisors here); this in turn further improves the ethical behaviour of employees. It is vital that managers or supervisors are motivated to practice ethical leadership because they directly influence the employees. It has been suggested that top managers, especially chief executive officers, have the ability to shape the ethical climate, which also influences the ethical behaviour of employees further. This study offered several feasible ways that managers can apply to achieve that. In particular, top managers may utilise the ethical climate as a way of communicating the ethical values that they have to their subordinates, thereby serving as a motivation for the subordinates to adopt an ethical behaviour. It was also suggested by this study that ethical climate and the P–O fit may, to some degree, substitute each other as they influence the ethical behaviour of employees. Therefore, firms that were identified to have a low level of ethical standards, practices, and policies, at least from the employees' perspective, are better poised to conduct ethical issues in order to construct the ethical behaviour of their subordinates. More importantly, it is highly essential that the value congruence between an organization and its followers be considered.Social implicationsThis study highlighted the notion of ethics and how it’s essential for society. Ethics refer to the norms, standards, and values that direct the behavior of an individual. Ethical behaviour is vital in society because we need to be treated with respect as human beings.Originality/valueThis study responds to recent calls for more research to identify factors which may strengthen or mitigate the influence ethical behavior in the workplace such as ethical leadership, ethical climate and Person–Organization.