Ethics at the workplace is a profound basis for an organization or a structural part of an organization to achieve the most effective and efficient results in its activities. This structural component of the corporate culture depends upon administrative support, which, however, must be aimed at the personnel as well as at the administration itself. The most complicated decisions lie on the shoulders of the manager as he is not only the person to control his own actions in terms of ethics, he is also the person, who develops and maintains he ethical aspect in the activity of the structural unit or the whole organization that he governs. In his book Terry L Cooper discovers multiple issues of consideration in solving specific ethical complications; however, he does not give any specific algorithms of success leaving the decision to be made by the manager himself in a certain organizational situation.
The author defines the most common obstacles that are faced by the manager in an organization. He indicates them as certain threats, which arise on the way of either maintaining ethical climate in an organization or solve a particular issue. As far as corruption is concerned, it is fundamental issue for the organization to cope with. Corporate culture can develop into one of a too informal kind and the missions of organization as a whole as well as the individual goals of its members as parts of this organization can be lost in a chain of two-sided favors, which are made beyond the principal goals of the organization. The author suggests organizational and individual actions that can be taken in a certain situation, such as being aware of the organization’s missions and individual values and priorities in relation to the organization.
The second threat to be concerned in the management process is tyranny or hubris. Again the author underlines the importance of governance level awareness in the threat as well as individual consciousness that has to foresee the consequences of a particular decision from the practical point of view and introduce customization to suit the implementation of a certain organizational program to the real routine activities. The reaction from all the levels of organization structure makes it possible to keep within the borders of acceptable level and pace of changes so that any decision does not provoke revolution within an organization. Tyranny leads an organization to bureaucratization and corporate culture decline.
Another threat indicated by Terry L Cooper in his book is self-service attitude of an organization in terms of its contribution to community, group and the whole society. That is also the way of decline by an organization as it lowers the interest to an organization by the surrounding environment, hence, an organization loses its public importance. The key decision to elude from this negative ethical dilemma is training of the personnel – from lower level employees to top management – clearly defining the goals of an organization in terms of its public mission. Volunteering and contributions to socially important events …