Organizational Ethics

RUNNING HEAD:   ORGANIZATIONAL ETHICS

Organizational Ethics
Pamela Hailey
BUS 610-Organizational Behavior
Week 1 Assignment
Professor I. Wan
September 19, 2011

Ashford University
Organizational Ethics
“Ethics involves the study of moral issues and choices.   It is concerned with right versus wrong, good versus bad, and the many shades of gray in supposedly black-and-white issues (Kinicki, 2009, p. 23).”   Ethics is a major concern for many organizations today because of external and internal corporate image, shareholder profitability, and corporate fraud, just to name a few.   Individual influences, both internal and external, impact ethical behavior.   However, an organization can influence the ethical behavior of its employees.   It is important in our society, today, for organizations to take responsibility for their ethical behavior.   That responsibility begins with the individual, whether manager or subordinate employee.
Organizations are concerned with ethical issues for several reasons.   These reasons include, but are not limited to, external product image, corporate fraud, and corporate profitability.   In our global economy, it is important for organizations to not only be concerned with ethical issues, but to meet their global corporate social responsibility.   Corporate social responsibility is defined as the expectations that a corporation will go above and beyond following the law and making a profit (Kinicki, 2009).   In other words, corporations are expected to do more than what is required by law or what it takes to make the company profitable.   These expectations tend to the needs of stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers, and countries and communities in which they operate (Kinicki, 2009).   According to Kinicki (2009), the best way for an organization to exercise its corporate social responsibility is to follow Carroll’s Global Corporate Social Responsibility Pyramid.   Carroll’s CSR Pyramid states that an organization should... [continues]

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