The role of leadership integrity in organizational ethics discussion

My discussion:  & reply to jeffrey and edwards discussion

Prior to beginning your discussion response, read Managing for organizational integrity (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..  In the article, Paine (1994) described scenarios of various  organizations. Choose one of the ethics topics: integrity as a governing  ethic, emphasizing core values, building shared aspirations, or  defining right action.

• Summarize the information shared in the article for your chosen topic.
• Describe how the ethics topic could be incorporated into your organization or an organization that you are familiar with.

Your response must be a minimum of 300 words.

Guided Response: Review several of your classmates’  posts and respond to at least two of your peers by 11:59 p.m. on Day 7  of the week. You are encouraged to post your required replies early  during the week to promote more meaningful interactive discourse in the  discussion. When responding to your classmate, offer at least one  suggestion of additional method(s) of incorporating their chosen ethical  topic into the organization.

Your response must be a minimum of 150 words.

Jeffreys discussion reply:

Paine  (1994) described a high-pressure sales environment at Sears, Roebuck  & Company in the automotive services business during the early  1990’s. Customers were frequently being sold parts and services that  they did not need. More than 40 states accused the company of acting  unethically and misleading customers which resulted in lawsuits and $60  million in customer refunds. While upper management did not tell  employees to act this way, they helped create this type of environment  by increasing minimum work quotas and offering productivity incentives  for mechanics. If automotive service advisers did not meet their sales  quotas, they were often transferred or had their hours reduced. This  type of environment left employees with few options so they would often  sell parts or services that were not needed to meet their quotas.

By evaluating integrity as a governing ethic, Sears clearly failed to  use integrity as a self-governing guiding principle for the  organization. Ethic’s was unfortunately not a guiding value. Instead,  pushing sales at any cost appeared to be the company’s guiding value. As  a result, this had a negative effect on its employees and customers.  Sears should have instead embraced ethical practices and integrity from  the top and encouraged responsible conduct. They should have had proper  codes of conduct in place, audits and controls, and an appropriate  system of incentives.

While using integrity as a governing ethic is important for every  organization, I would suggest that Wells Fargo could also benefit from  some self-reflection in this area. Very similar to the Sears scenario,  Wells Fargo recently had similar issues with high-pressure sales at any  cost. Their employees were forced to meet quotas or be terminated. This  resulted in employees creating millions of fake bank accounts just to  keep their job.  Organizations should not sacrifice integrity or act  unethically for the sake of sales and growth. Having positive guiding  values and principles will actually help organizations by obeying laws  and avoiding legal sanctions. It is also the right thing to do.

Reference:

Paine, L. S. (1994, March-April). Managing for organizational integrity. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/1994/03/managing-for-organizational-integrity

Reply to edwards discussion:

When  it comes to doing the right thing, it comes with specific duties to  protect our own other people’s dignity along with the rights of others.  “Right action is defined as logically, expediently, and morally right.  Managers teach employees to look at the needs of the customers,  suppliers, and the community—in addition to those of the company and its  employees—when making decisions” (Paine, 1994). This means that do unto  others the way you want to be treated in return along with using the  proper skill and technique to perform in an effective way. For instance,  it’s not right to for an employee to get an attitude with a customer  because they are making a complaint about the product they received or  bullying a colleague for making a mistake.

The right action can be combined with the ethics of care which  includes good characteristics that are used to communicate and develop  relationships with others. “An ethics of care seeks to discover how  people “sustain fragile networks of relations that allow people to grow  and prosper, developing trust, respect, and responsibility for each  other” (Gabriel, 2009, p. 5.1). I chose the right action because it  worked well at my previous job within the parks and recreation  department. Just like the Wetherill Associates company that was used as  an example in the right action organizational ethic, my work group  consisted of a small number of workers.

Honesty is also a moral that fits the right action because customers  lose trust in a business that lies and a colleague’s morale will drop if  management is dishonest. I believe that both of those ethics can be  used in a small or large organization as long as the right employees are  in place. Upon hiring, new applicants can be tested through various  assessments to determine their character and train them as well through  policies and guidelines that management and human resources has designed  that enforce the right action and ethics of care.

References

Gabriel, Y. (2009). Reconciling an ethic of care with critical management pedagogy. Management Learning, 40(4), 379–385. doi: 10.1177/1350507609335846

Paine, L. S. (1994, Mar.-Apr.). Managing for organizational integrity. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/1994/03/managing-for-organizational-integrity (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.