Unethical Behavior: Causes and Remedies

Unethical behaviour is an act that falls contrary to what is considered morally right for a person, or a business or a profession or in politics. It can also be behaviour of a person that falls outside the principles admired in the community where he lives in.
Unethical behavior of a person: Lying to family members, friends, colleagues to get unprincipled gain, Stealing money from the house or at workplace, borrowing money from a friend and not repaying back with an intention to cheat him, maintaining extramarital relationship, talking bad about friends, relatives, or colleagues behind their back, conducting personal business on office time, manipulating expense reimbursements, selling a property without disclosing its defective title or structural defects or accident history of the vehicle etc. to the buyer, are some of the examples of unethical behavior of a person. Employees using office properties or resources for personal purposes, employees taking home office supplies, taking credit of others achievements, accepting outside employment or office without the prior sanction of the competent authority, sexual harassment of a subordinate employee using one’s position, a purchase officer or Manager accepting gift or free trips from a vendor and then selects the vendor’s products for purchase by the company are the other examples of unethical behaviour of a person.
Kinds of Unethical Behavior in Business:
Dumping pollutants into water supply rather than cleaning up the pollution properly, releasing toxins into the air in levels above what is permitted beyond environmental protection agency, knowingly manufacturing of items that have inherent environmental risks, false advertisements to convince customers to buy a company’s product. Refusing to honour a warranty claim on a defective product, management withholding the report of adverse developments in the company until the stockholders meeting finished are the examples of unethical behavior by companies. Other unethical practices include classifying an employee as an independent contractor and not as an employee in order to circumvent service benefit and compensation eligibility to him; not paying workers a fair wage; employing children under the legal working age and unsafe or unsanitary working conditions are unethical.
Unethical Behaviour of Professionals:
Unethical behaviour by professionals is an act that falls in contravention of professional ethics. An external auditor of a company shall make full, fair, accurate, timely and understandable disclosure of financial information. If he fails to report non-compliance of applicable laws, rules and regulations are discreditable to his profession. Similarly, a lawyer firm accepting a new client who is adverse to other clients the firm has represented, past and present is professionally unethical. A doctor not telling a patient his true diagnosis and directing the patient to extra testing or treatment center gaining a cut from those centers is unethical. A teacher engages in private tutoring, there is a risk that an actual, potential or perceived conflict of interest exists.
Unethical behavior of politicians:
Distributing money, liquors, food, and gifts, etc. to bribe the voters, spending money towards election propaganda beyond the limit fixed by the Election Commission, using the money that was donated for election campaign for personal, non-approved expenses, the ruling political party using government machineries to harass political opponents and arresting rivals with fabricated cases etc. are unethical behavior of politicians. The involvement of large corporates in political campaigns and their sponsorship of certain politicians to get concessions or tax exemption to their products once they come to the power raises a number of ethical issues.

Causes of unethical behaviours:
Many people do not care about ethical values and self-interest, ambition to further the career, and downright greed; are foundation stone of their unethical activities. When people are stressed and economic pressures rise, then those people are tempted to act in ways that may not be ethical. The pressure to meet unrealistic business objectives and deadlines also tempts the people to indulge in unethical practices. Many people do unethical things due to the ignorance that the acts are unethical and not knowing the magnitude of the consequences when caught. Some people think when everyone is doing it, it must be right. When a colleague is involved in multiple malpractices for personal gain but doesn’t get caught, the other people also inclined to start such malpractices. Absence of a code of ethics and bad leadership in the orgainsation are other causes of ethical misconduct.
Remedies to unethical practices at the workplace
The primary cause of unethical behaviours can be drawn to absence of maintaining the type of reliable leadership that is necessary for running an ethical organization. Some businesses have no formal ethical policy documents and offer no guidance at all. In some cases they have policies that are unclear, vague, inconsistent or not constantly enforced. The managers must practice what they preach to subordinates. If employees see the boss promote activities and decisions that are unethical, they may do likewise. It is important to include in code of ethics instructions about how to report unethical behavior. This is because many employees worry about ramifications of reporting unethical activities. This is because in many cases the people behaving illegally are higher-ups in the company. They don’t want to damage their career or incur the wrath of the offender or they simply do not know how to report such activities. Hence every organization shall establish a policy manual and ethical code of conduct in order to restore and maintain a culture that upholds honest and ethical behaviours. The top managers of the organisation must verbally promote ethical environment and persistently walk the talk. It is further desirable making ethical behavior part of the organization‘s agenda. There should be the setting up of annual business ethics training for the employees and a good whistle blowing mechanism. If an insider raises the alarm, that is known as whistleblowing.

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