Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 13, 1993 TAG: 9306110021
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By HELEN T. GRAY THE KANSAS CITY STAR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
You know the client has given you incomplete information. You report this to your supervisor, who tells you to prepare the return anyway.
Do you?
That was the decision confronting Jennifer Parker of Leawood, Mo., when she worked for a law firm in another state. It is typical of the ethical conflicts that many employees and managers face regularly.
Parker prepared the return but told her boss that she could not, in good conscience, sign it as a preparer. So he did.
It is difficult to obtain solid research data on how employees handle ethical conflicts on the job. Most studies deal with corporate rather than individual behavior. Not every employee takes the high road.
Moral behavior in the work place is based on several factors, said Edward Walter, a professor of philosophy who teaches ethics and business ethics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
"Often individuals think about their own self-interest," he said. "Often they may justify the means to an end that is considered desirable. But any means to an end that is desirable is not a good means. For instance, lying and distorting data is not justifiable."
Richard T. DeGeorge, co-director of the International Center for Ethics in Business at the University of Kansas, said he once asked an executive the easiest way to get employees to act unethically. The reply: "Tell them to do something that is almost impossible to do and to get it done and you don't care how it is done or you'll get someone else to do it."
One of the biggest complaints from employees is being asked to do something they think is unethical, said DeGeorge. Some companies have set up "ethical hot lines" to advise employees in those situations, he said.
Most business managers evaluate decisions based on what is economically sound, what is legal and what is ethical, said H. Joseph Reitz, co-director with DeGeorge of the ethics center at KU.
"Those three really come from different systems, so they may not be in harmony with each other," he said. "But I do not think there is a good business decision that is unethical, at least in the long run."
Employees often base their decisions on the morality of their employer, Walter said.
Reitz agreed. Leadership sets the moral tone for a company, he said.
"The leadership has to live it, not just say it," said Reitz, who also is a professor in the School of Business at KU. "Employees have to see them making the right choices, even if it costs them and the company some money in the short run."
A code of ethics can tell employees what is expected but that alone will not enhance ethical behavior, said the Rev. E. Eugene Arthur, professor of management and economics at Rockhurst College in Kansas City, Mo.
"It takes management portraying an attitude that management will take nothing less," he said.
But if the code deals with only such things as conflicts of interest, taking home company supplies and padding expense accounts, workers will think management is concerned only with protecting itself and the profits of the corporation, he said.
"Management has to go beyond that and establish that the philosophy of the company is to have safe products, to be customer-centered, to ensure that products will not pollute the environment," Arthur said. "If management projects an attitude that it is only interested in profits, it may encourage people to do things that are not only unethical but also illegal."
Marion Merrell Dow's "core values" include a statement that sounds like the Biblical Golden Rule: There is a commitment "to treating each other as we would wish to be treated - in a safe, innovative and collaborative work place which provides rewards commensurate with our performance as individuals and as a company."
"These core values are incorporated in all of the training we do," said Dick Johnson, a company spokesman.
Merrill Siler, who graduated in May from Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, worked many years in the heavy manufacturing business before he entered a seminary. His experiences with companies that were reducing their work forces gave him the impression that a company's treatment of employees may influence their attitudes toward ethics.
"I saw things from both sides, as a factory worker and as a manager," he said. "I think the biggest temptations for workers arise when they don't feel a part of the business or they don't feel that they have anything at stake in the company. And today there is not the loyalty to the company or to the product as it once was."
Competition may motivate employees to cheat, Reitz said, and as companies downscale, there is even more competition for fewer slots.
"Companies need to be careful about what kind of behavior they reward," he said. "If you reward and promote people who get ahead at the expense of others, who is to say they will not reward themselves at the expense of the company?"
The most common excuse for unethical behavior in the work place, he said, is "everybody's doing it." Padding expense accounts and using company supplies, for example, may not be considered unethical but perks of the job.
"People inflate their salaries on their resumes and reason that companies expect that you're doing this," Reitz said. " . . . individuals look at the company and say: ` . . . Why should I not pad my expense account when I am not being justly rewarded for my efforts?' "
Reitz said employees may justify unethical actions if they see the company ignoring ethical standards. Companies, in turn, justify their unethical actions by telling themselves such practices are essential to staying in business and that employees benefit in the long run, he said.
An employee will behave ethically if he or she has strong personal values and a conviction that certain moral principles do not change, Reitz said.
"I have found that those who come from a strong religious background have a framework and some history of understanding that there is a right from wrong," he said. "Those who do not have this have to invent right and wrong for themselves, and in our society, with its conflicting values, this is very hard to do."
by CNB