For management, the most important way to avoid ethical mistakes is by paying attention to the information they would prefer to ignore. However, by not addressing the situation head-on the consequences for the organization could escalate and ethical misconduct could ruin a company's reputation. Unethical behavior covers a wide range of activities from financial misconduct to illegal employment practices, not taking care of safety issues in the workplace, overbilling consumers to misrepresenting a product in an advertisement. The question is have you ever seen unethical behavior in the workplace? Provide some insight into the situation. Was it fixed by management or not and what were the consequences? If you haven't seen any unethical behavior try to find a current situation of unethical conduct from a news article and provide your observations.

 

Answer:

Examples of unethical behavior

• Employee changing clothes in his working area. -  This employee who conducted unethical behavior is from a higher position. Most of the employees are female. For a period of time, female employees are having a hard time because of this behavior. Though, it is not an everyday situation, but the impact is there. The employee changes his clothes in his working station and sometimes in the pantry area, these spots can be seen through the peripheral view of employees. Sometimes, by accident, it is not just a peripheral view that is why it was too uncomfortable. No policy was implemented specifically for this but in general code of conduct applies to this. But this behavior is something that don't need a policy, it needs common sense and decency. Eventually, this behavior was addressed by the new management, there was a change of management. They just addressed it in a very casual way, by talking, as if no employee report such event since the people from the new management have witnessed this once. The new management are very concern to the well-being of the employees that is why they make a weekly gathering to talk comfortable with the employees about concerns in the workplace.
• Employee asking for treat from supplier - The company is in need of suppliers for a project. Therefore, the procurement personnel has to get suppliers who will come for presentation of their products and services. Some suppliers do bring treats for employee who will attend the presentation. One supplier brought a bring treat, a lunch for every employees in the company, not only those who attended but every employee. It has made known that it was the personnel who asked for that big treat. It was very unprofessional, some employees even felt ashamed to the suppliers because they are just prospects, not even sure that they will supply for the project. After this event, the management talked to the employee and gave him some mentoring for that.

Step-by-step explanation

• The employee who conducted unethical behavior is part of the management. Because he feel very comfortable in the office, he even changes his clothes in his working area. This behavior is an easy situation to handle at the same time its hard. It's easy because the employee just need to have a common sense and hard because he is just too insensitive. Even if the employee have common sense if he is insensitive he will just choose what is easier for him. It's easy for him to change clothes in his working area therefore he will choose it and won't care if female employees will be uncomfortable because he's insensitive. It was great that there was a change of management and have been more open to employees' concern and addressed it without any struggle from employees. The impact stays to the female employees, they feel uncomfortable with the employee and have created a negative impression especially because the employee is suppose to be a respected one who implements and show the good conduct in the workplace but fails to.
• Asking for treats feels like the employee is more focus on it, not on the products and services of the supplier. It was too unprofessional. Treats are just like an add-ons and not the main thing. As a professional, he have to evaluate his role and how to be professional. Even if it was done by an employee, the impact to the suppliers will be like the whole company is like that and might seem that they are not really working on a project that is profitable but just really want to ask suppliers to come and bring treats not to present their products and services. The consequence is that supplier will ask something big in return, they will ask to be the supplier for every projects. This is why training and mentoring is important for employees who communicate with clients or people from the outside. Each employee carry the name of the company, and how they present their selves means representing the whole company.