Ethics in Organizational Culture. Management Essay

Ethics in Organizational Culture
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Ethics in Organizational Culture
KeepGoing is a non-profit organization whose operations are based in developing countries. It aims at empowering women and youth by providing them with funds and training them to support their entrepreneurial activities, with the aim of giving them financial independence. As a non-profit organization, it depends highly on donations, which are mostly acquired by the employees.
Organizational culture plays a vital role in the creation of policies and practices that guide different actors in the organization. According to Griffin (2017), an organization’s culture, coupled with the actions of its leaders, is the cornerstone of the ethical situation of any organization. As such, some cultures can contribute greatly to the creation of ethical or unethical practices and policies. As noted by Griffin (2017), an organization that completely supports its actors in doing whatever it takes to protect the interests of the stakeholders can actively result in the formation of unethical practices. The opposite is also true, where the organizational culture can result in ethical practices. In the case of KeepGoing, the organization has cultivated a culture that encourages stiff competition among the employees. This has led to the creation of unethical practices among the employees and their managers too since they are under pressure to be the best (Griffin, 2017). For example, employees can receive donations from criminals and because they are under pressure to achieve, they might end up accepting the donations so as to stay ahead of the rest.
According to Kurtz (2003), the values, traditions, and beliefs that constitute an organization’s culture have a great effect on the decision-making process of employees and their managers. At KeepGoing, the organization culture is based on keeping the interests of all stakeholders before anything else, and is a top-down approach, which has prompted the formation of practices that are potentially unethical. As noted by Kurtz (2003), employees are likely to make decisions based on previous practices of those at the management level. Further, if an organization’s culture does not support whistleblowing, then the decision-making process of employees is affected and may increase the level of unethical behavior in the organization. Whistleblowing is an effective tool in informing the management of any unethical practices, which if embraced, would eliminate unethical behavior (Farooqi, Abid, & Ahmed, 2017). However, a culture that does not protect whistleblowing will only result in the creation of unethical behaviors since employees will observe unethical practices and keep quiet about them or worse, adopt those behaviors themselves.
Specific policy that presents an ethical dilemma at KeepGoing is the policy on acceptance and refusal of donations, which has not stipulated which circumstances constitute donations with strings attached. This, ...