Ethnic Climate in the Company and in the Workplace

The ethical climate is an organization's moral guide, which can have a major effect on many things within a company, its employees, and customers. Ethical climate is a powerful principle that results from both a company’s history along with its leadership. This principle is important to an organization because it’s the honest way of doing things. Additionally, biases impact moral decision making and could affect work performance. A few biases include in-group favoritism and over claiming credit. A company’s image is very valuable and could get tarnished overnight, especially when negative behavior was taken place.

An example of an unethical issue is when two security officers forcibly removed a passenger from a United Airlines flight back on April 9, 2017.

An organization’s ethical climate is an essential principle and should be valued for a number of reasons. These conditions impact the behavior, motivation, and effectiveness of the workforce which should always be positive. Organizational ethical climate refers to the moral atmosphere of the work environment and the level of ethics practiced within a company and also carried out by leadership.

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It derives from the authority, values, norms and behavioral methods that exist within an organization. If positive, ethical climate can empower and boost morale as well as productivity.

On the contrary, if not practiced and valued, this can cause a hostile work environment that could introduce unwanted behaviors from employees. An organization never wants to create a negative work environment, so it's up to leadership to become admirable role models while leading by example.

These examples need to propose qualities that include setting standards, model appropriate behavior, and making ethics a clear and regular part of their day. It’s important to deliver the proper values, principles, and fundamentals of a business’s ethical climate while illustrating it through positive actions. Other qualities include setting standards, model appropriate behavior, and making ethics a clear and regular part of their day. One way to help boost the moral is to have an open-door policy for leadership to offer employees a way to speak in person with management about ethical misconduct.

Leadership may, therefore, be the most important lever in an ethical system created to support the ethical conduct that is in place. Ethics starts at the top of an organization were a method is displayed as well as relayed throughout the whole company. As stated before, an ethical leader is one who lives and breathes the company’s ethical conduct and goes beyond to facilitate positive outcomes.  If higher-ups are not perceived as truthful and are low in morals, the rest of the company will follow suit and will lack ethics as well. Any ethics policy should include owners and executives, or it will be useless. For example, if employees see owners and executives cheating and lying, they will feel that behavior is accepted, which is clearly not. Business ethics involves everyone in a company and is a beneficial plan. Without the proper ethics policy in place, a business is not likely to survive long.

Every single day throughout the world, there are actions taking place based on thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions of which they are completely unaware when it involves our work environment. Without being aware of it, we all have biases that may affect our work performance or illustrate our personality towards colleagues. This doesn’t make someone a bad person, but simply means we are human beings, influenced by our life experiences and those around us. Biases impact moral decision making is something everyone should be mindful of, or people may be forced to make regretful ones.

A few biases include in-group favoritism and over claiming credit. In-group favoritism is the inclination for people to be more helpful and show more attention towards certain members of their own group over people from other groups. A few real like examples of such group identities include ethnicity, politics, and religious views. This type of thinking can cause someone to stereotype or have a negative effect on another group which is extremely inappropriate. Another bias people should be aware of is overclaiming credit. The bias is another way people may fool themselves about the moral virtue of their own decision making.

Research has proven that people have claimed more credit than what they are really accountable for. Overclaiming credit is extremely unfortunate and is a worldwide problem. A simple example is when a group of people who have worked on a project, argue over who completed the most work. This causes each person blaming the other for not pulling their fair share while causing a negative environment for everyone. The fact of the matter is, everyone needs to understand the true amount of work they contribute while devoting credit when deserved. Biased tendencies can affect our professional and personal lives unless we are aware of them. Bias awareness can prompt actions and decisions while helping someone make fair business decisions- this will only improve and empower an organization’s ethical climate. It’s important for all organizations, schools, universities, and government institutions to communicate the significance of treating all employees, customers, and students with utmost respect and fairness.

The ethical climate in an organization includes multiple areas of a business. Every CEO, President, and business owner should understand how ethical issues apply to run a successful business, managing employees and handling customers. Should ethic violations take place, CEOs and business owners need to act in order to resolve the problem as soon as possible. On April 9, 2017, two security officers forcibly removed a passenger by the name of David Dao from an overbooked United Airlines flight, that was departing Chicago, Illinois for Louisville, Kentucky. Video footage surfaced of the whole incident which was upsetting and damaging to United Airlines. During the argument, it shows the passenger’s head hitting an armrest, while security guards dragged him carelessly down the aisle and off the plane.

People around the world knew this behavior was extremely unethical because an incident passenger was treated like a garbage bag being dragged down the sidewalk- which is unacceptable, even if the passenger was refusing orders. After the event was known people quickly started to boycott United Airlines. This ethical issue could have easily been avoided by offering a flight voucher to the passenger- everyone likes freebies! United Airlines could have offered something to Dr. Dao for him to willingly get off the flight, rather risking the company’s brand and handing over $140 million for injuries. Another way the security officers could have mediated the situation was to ask another passenger to politely get off the overbooked flight.

Ethical climate, moral decision-making, and ethical dilemmas are crucial segments in the workplace, classroom, etc. that should be taken seriously and examined and improved if needed. Some of these concepts are instilled everyone, but let’s face it no one is perfect. We could always do better and improve our way of thinking along with our behavior. In addition, we can be proactive in addressing and reducing our biases when becoming mindful of them. Being aware of your biases, practicing mindful thinking, and treating each individual with respect, we can evolve beyond our biases and engage with all people in a positive manner in any environment. The unethical event that took place on the United Airlines flight was unfortunate but hopefully was a wake-up call to not only company’s around the world to reevaluate their code of conduct, but people on the proper way of treating their employees, customers and the people around them. Every CEO, President, and business owner should stay up to date on the ethical climate of their company. One great way of doing so is to interact with staff and observe the ethical climate for themselves.