This paper will provide a basic description and evaluation of the trends in Organizational Behavior (OB). It then goes on to expound on the influence of ethical behavior on decision-making in an organization and its prevalence in a modern-day corporate environment. It also explores the ethical area of Organizational Behavior and how it can cause friction in the organization stemming from personal and career oriented causes. The final parts of this thesis speak about work stress and technological aspects of OB.
Firstly one must know what OB is. It’s an interdisciplinary field of study and practice, investigating the impact of individuals, groups, structure and environment on behavior within organizations. The primary concern of OB is with people, what they do and how their behavior affects individual, group and organizational performance. Life is full of decisions. Each day, people are faced with different problems requiring answers and solutions.
Decision-making is the process of defining problems and choosing a course of action from among alternatives. Decision-making at best is a challenge for employees in general and managers in particular. For example, many decisions management faces turn out to be ethical decisions or have ethical implications or consequences. Once we leave the realm of relatively ethical-free decisions (such as which production method to use for a particular product), decisions quickly become complex, and many carry with them an ethical dimension. Decision making in itself is not a simple process and is even more complicated when one thinks about the character and nature of decision-making that includes ethical dimensions.
It would be nice if decision-making was indeed a simple process and that a set of ethical principles was readily available for employees to ;plug in; and walk away from, with a decision to be forthcoming. However, in reality that is not, nor will it ever be, the case when it comes to ethics and decision making. It is safe to say that decision-making is one of the most important – if not the most important – of all individual and group efforts within an organization. Ethics are the rules, principles, standards, or beliefs that commonly define right and wrong. Ethics are involved in all facets of business from decision-making to budgeting, from personnel issues to leadership.
Today’s managers must be able to see the ethical issues in the choices they face, make decisions within an ethical framework, and build and maintain an ethical work environment. Managers must be particularly sensitive to ethical issues because of their key role as a bridge between upper management and operating employees. For most employees, their manager is the only contact they have with middle and top management. As such, employees interpret the company’s ethical standards through the actions and words of their managers. If managers take company supplies home, cheat on maintenance reports, or engage in other unethical practices, they set a tone for their work groups that is likely to undermine all the efforts by top management to create a corporate climate of high ethical standards.
In a sense, therefore, managers must be even more ethical than their employees. There are many stakeholders with interests in ethical decision-making: the organization itself, corporate boards, middle and top management, managers, operating employees, customers and clients, suppliers, competitors, the industry at large, the community, and the nation. At one time or another, ethical decisions affect all of these constituencies, and ethical considerations may change based on the particular group of stakeholders affected. When an organization operates ethically, the people who manage that organization evaluate the organization’s business practices in light of human values of morality. An ethical dilemma occurs when two or more values or goals (e.g., profit, growth, technological progress, desire to .
