Ethical issues in interpersonal communication

Ethics and the Organization
From debates over drug tests, affirmative action, and high salaries for chief executing officers (CEOs) of struggling companies to outrage over business scandals in corporations such as Enron and WorldCom, Americans are paying more attention to business ethics than ever before. However, observers do not always agree on where the responsibility for ethical behavior rests within an organization. When determining what ethical choices and decisions an organization should make, people usually view the process in one of two ways:

Individual perspective
Communal perspective (Widdows, 2013)
Many Americans take an individualistic perspective, viewing ethical failures as resting on the shoulders of the individuals within the organization. From this perspective, each person in the corporation is responsible for his or her own behavior.

In the communal view, however, individuals are considered to be members of communities that are all partially responsible for the ethical behavior of their members. This means that changing an individual's behavior requires a change in the community as a whole.

Ethics discussions in an organizational context tend to focus on individual rights, such as the right to free speech or privacy. Policies and behaviors that infringe on these rights are seen as unethical. However, a communal approach focuses on the common good or what is in the best interests of the entire community. The morality of an action is assessed based on its consequences for the group.

For example, in an individualistic approach, discussions regarding drug abuse in the workplace usually center on whether organizations should be allowed to infringe on the employee's right to privacy. From a communal approach, however, the discussion would revolve around what types of drug policies are the most likely to promote the good of the community, the employer, and the employee.

On the contrary, when you view corporations in the communal way and hold them responsible for unethical practices (such as dumping toxic waste), no single individual is held accountable or liable. Consequently, those responsible for the decision to engage in unethical and, often, illegal practices may not suffer any consequences and may be free to continue these practices.

How will you balance these two approaches? You need to hold both the community and the individuals who lead it responsible for their practices. For example, political leaders are tried in war courts for crimes against humanity even though their subordinates performed the atrocities. At the same time, when making decisions, corporate leaders need to consider the effects of their decisions on both individuals and society.

What role does communication play in organizational ethics? Communication figures in organizational ethics in many ways (Mainiero & Jones, 2013). First, many of the ethical issues in organizations revolve around communication. Organizations have to decide when to tell employees about impending layoffs; they have to develop advertising campaigns that communicate the identity of their corporation and its products to consumers and they must decide how to communicate information regarding their profits and losses to shareholders and Wall Street. Further, organizations must decide what types of employee communications are ethical and what media is allowable in the workplace (Mainiero & Jones, 2013).

Second, the ways in which an organization defines, communicates, and responds to ethical and unethical behavior shape how individuals within the organization behave. If corporate policy and organizational leaders are vague on the issue of ethics or, even worse, fail to address ethics, employees may believe that ethics are not a central concern of the organization and may behave accordingly.

For example, in 2014, Brook published an article in USA Today regarding documents that had been secured and alleging how hundreds of millions of dollars had been awarded to soldiers as kickbacks for persuading friends to enlist. In 2005, Esquire Magazine published an article about the alleged ethical violations of military recruiters. The military personnel interviewed for the article claimed that despite written policies encouraging ethical behavior, recruiters were violating policies and ethics standards in order to meet the recruitment goals. Perhaps the recruiters believe that recruiting ethically is secondary or perhaps even an unnecessary consideration in order to meet recruiting goals. So a question that likely comes to mind is, why might recruiters think in this manner? Shortly after Brook’s article, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made statements acknowledging military ethics violations and alleged military ethics violations and said that there needed to be increased urgency in addressing the ethics violations (WJLA News, 2014).

So far you have learned about organizational principles that affect employee communication and behavior. Next, you will examine how another organizational principle—diversity—impacts employees and their relationships with one another and their companies.

References:

Brook, T. V. (2014). Recruiting fraud, kickback scandal rocks Army. USA Today.Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/03 /army-national-guard-bogus-bonus-payments-iraq-afghanistan/5182717/

Mainiero, L. A., & Jones, K. J. (2013). Workplace romance 2.0: Developing a communication ethics model to address potential sexual harassment from inappropriate social media contacts between coworkers. Journal of Business Ethics, 114(2), 367–379.

Widdows, H. (2013). The connected self: The ethics and governance of the genetic individual. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press.

WJLA News. (2014, February 5). Defense Secretary Hagel addresses ethical issues in military. Retrieved from http://wjla.com/news/local/defense-secretary-hagel-addresses-military-ethics-99943