Ethical Values and Legislation

Recognize when and how you would raise matters which conflict with ethical values or legislation.

Drawing upon work or personal examples, analyze how you could/have known when and how to raise concerns when issues such as organizational policies or leadership approaches conflict with ethical values or legislation.

Assessment Guidance

1. Raising Issues – speaking up and being confident, using evidenced based approach to raise issues relating to organizational policy, leadership approach, ethical values or issues surrounding compliance with legislation. The conflict may arise from organizational policies or practices, leadership style or conflict between individuals.
2. You should identify and explain a minimum of one ethical conflict, and one legislative conflict.

Because this assessment requirement is reflective, 1st person perspective should be used for this section (write about what you saw, heard etc).

INDICATIVE CONTENT
When and how to raise issues, for example organizational policies and practices, organizational leadership style, personal relationships, conflict style. Examples of ‘matters which conflict’, for example with legal matters, with ethical values, with personal values. Concept of ‘whistleblowing’, high-profile examples.

ETHICAL VALUES – CONFLICTS (IN THE WORKPLACE)
(From a review of a ‘Nutshell’ (CIPD) article)

Why do people seem to behave ethically in their personal lives, but not in the workplace? We like to think that only ‘bad’ people could be responsible for cheating the system in ways that resulted in the major corporate scandals we’ve seen recently. But it turns out that many employees at various levels in the organizations played a part in these wrongdoings.

The study described in this article explored how business leaders in different countries deal with ethical dilemmas at work. The 30 leaders recalled a total of 87 ‘major’ ethical dilemmas that had occurred during their working lives, over 50 of which had occurred in the last five years. This shows how frequently senior managers are faced with critical moral issues, and highlights the importance of their ability to do the right thing in such situations. Most of the dilemmas mentioned were the result of conflicting interests and clashing cultures (with only 16% caused by bribery, corruption, or anti-competition issues).

So, what are the barriers to people’s ability to act ethically in the workplace? This article suggests three main problems in organisations:

1. Pressure driven by business transformation/change management initiatives: leaders in the study reported being under pressure to cut staff numbers rapidly or close offices in major markets, which often created unprecedented moral dilemmas caused by conflicts

of interest and values. Many leaders felt compelled to act against their personal values since they were unprepared for handling such situations.

2. Reward: since business leaders and managers tend to be rewarded for hitting targets, they can be lured into making decisions which achieve immediate outcomes, but which are detrimental to long-term success.
3. Cross-cultural differences: making ethical decisions can become more difficult when operating in a multinational corporation, since different cultures have their own ethical ‘rules’.

Source: What stops us from acting ethically at work? | CIPD

ETHICAL AND LEGAL CONFLICTS
Put simply, ethics refers to a sense of right and wrong. Societies have their ethical norms, sometimes embodied in laws that prohibit activities deemed unethical, and sometimes more a matter of traditions that consider some behaviors acceptable and others unacceptable.

Individuals usually have a personal sense of ethics, partly molded by social norms and shaped by family, religion and a person’s own intellectual and moral development.

Businesses large and small also operate in an ethical environment. When the practices of a business as a whole or of individual employees involve behaviors that some may find unacceptable, then ethical conflicts can arise.

ETHICAL CONFLICT EXAMPLES
Conflicts arise when someone acts in a way that ignores ethics or when individuals have different opinions about which behaviors are acceptable. As noted by Michigan State University, ethical conflicts at work tend to fall into several broad categories:
• Illegal Activities: Businesses shouldn’t break the law, but a glance at any newspaper
reveals that it happens fairly routinely. A company may decide, for example, to hire undocumented workers and pay them less than the minimum wage or offer bribes to government officials to secure a contract or speed up a permit process. Managers at the company may be expected to look the other way at these inappropriate behaviors.
• Toxic Workplace Culture: Who hasn’t heard horror tales of an abusive boss or a stabem-in-the-back coworker? Workplaces that tolerate discrimination, harassment or an overly harsh working environment create ongoing conflict between an individual sense of propriety and the actual conditions faced every day at work.
• Technology and Property: It’s not unusual for an employee to use a company phone to
make a personal call or take home a pen or two from company supplies. These trivial uses of company property are considered acceptable in most workplaces. However, opinions tend to differ as to where to draw the line. Taking a pen is one thing, but absconding with a company laptop is quite another.
• Community Expectations: Should your business take a stand on controversial issues of
the day, such as Black Lives Matter, global warming, or even paper vs. plastic straws? Company leaders and their employees may feel their day-to-day business objectives take priority over these issues. However, your clients, customers and members of the community may strongly feel otherwise. Situations like these can create conflicts between business objectives and societal goals.

MANAGING ETHICAL CONFLICTS IN THE WORKPLACE
Company leadership sets the tone and leads by example in terms of establishing the ethical culture of a business. As noted by the Harvard Business Review, the best strategy for managing ethical conflicts is to minimize missteps before they happen. Companies can take two critical steps to create a strong atmosphere to do the right thing.

Define explicit values: A well-designed statement of company ethics makes it clear to employees at all levels what the expectations of the firm are in terms of ethical behaviors. Some of these involve obvious statements, such as the company’s commitment to obey the law. Others emphasize important values, such as how to deal with customers and treat fellow employees with respect, along with mechanisms for resolving disputes when they arise.

Evaluation and Compliance: As companies grow large, they may create a specific job title or department for oversight of ethical issues and adherence to company norms. Even small and mid-sized businesses can assign someone to exercise the same role without a formal title. For example, if it’s important to your firm to have your sales staff operate without using pressure tactics to make a sale, it may be sensible to survey customers to make sure they feel comfortable with the sales process.

Similarly, it may be corporate policy to avoid dealing with suppliers who use child labor at their facilities. However, unless you have a means to audit supplier facilities, it may be difficult to keep to this ethical principle.

Source: Ethical Conflicts in the Workplace (chron.com)