978-0470639948 Chapter 1 Solution Manual Part 3

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ADDITIONAL QUESTION 4: WHAT IS THE EXTENT OF LIES AND CHEATING IN

SOCIETY?

LIES AND CHEATING

Managers need honest information from other employees and stakeholders to achieve

optimal organizational performance. Yet, truthfulness is particularly challenging for many

people.

At what age do individuals begin to lie? Children lie and deceive others as soon as they

can formulate and articulate alternative strategies, which is soon after they can speak.

oA child will deny having eaten forbidden food if the consequence of truth telling

is punishment.

oIf a forbidden activity is fun, children try to experience the forbidden activity

beyond parental observation and then deny having done so if asked. This pattern

remains a challenge throughout life.

EXHIBIT 1.6 provides results of a nationwide adult telephone survey:

91% lied regularly

35% stole office supplies

33% lied on a job application

ALTRUISM

Moral imperfection, however, is just a small aspect of human activity. If adults lie once a

day, then they are honest and truthful hundreds or thousands of times every day. At any

given moment, hundreds of millions of acts of kindness take place around the world.

According to developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello, helping behaviors are also

innate because preverbal children exhibit them prior to being taught rules of polite

behavior by their parents.

DISCUSSION ACTIVITY

Have students review EXHIBIT 1.7 “WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU LOST YOUR

WALLET.” How have they responded after finding a lost wallet or money that did not belong to

them, such as when a cashier returned too much change?

CHAPTER QUESTION 5: WHY DO GOOD PEOPLE BEHAVE UNETHICALLY?

Ethics would be easy to manage if it were simply a matter of detecting and dismissing

evil people. But that is not the nature of life in organizations.

DISCUSSION ACTIVITY

Ask students if they have ever lied to a boss, customer, or co-worker. How did they justify their

actions? Have them tell stories in small groups about these situations.

UNINTENDED UNETHICAL BEHAVIORS

Sometimes the unethical outcome was not intended. The person may have good motives,

but insufficient knowledge or awareness.

Sometimes the ethics of a situation are ambiguous or complex.

The unintended unethical behavioral outcome could result from a misaligned

management system rather than the fault of a particular employee.

CHOOSING BETWEEN COMPETING VALUES

Sometimes ethical dilemmas arise and the decision maker must choose between two

competing values, both of which are morally appropriate. But in choosing one set of

moral values over another, those not benefitted from the decision can claim the choice

was unethical.

Rushworth Kidder notes that “The really tough choices, then, don’t center upon right

versus wrong. They involve right versus right.”

Kidder identifies four classic ethical dilemmas based on competing values. All four of

these ethical dilemmas represent hard choices where an aggrieved party can claim the

decision maker has behaved unethically even though the decision maker thoughtfully

made what he or she considered to be a highly ethical decision:

Truth versus Loyalty

Individual versus Community

Short-Term versus Long-Term

Justice versus Mercy

INTENTIONAL UNETHICAL BEHAVIORS

The most basic justification for behaving unethically, as suggested by Kohlberg’s theory

of moral development, is to avoid punishment and receive praise.

On a broad contextual level, some good people attribute their occasional unethical

misbehaviors on an organizational culture that either encourages or tolerates them.

Some good people behave unethically as a result of feeling pressured to do so.

A survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management and the Ethics

Resource Center found that 24% of the respondents were pressured to compromise

ethical standards either periodically, fairly often, or all the time. Of those feeling

pressured, the top five organizational sources were:

1. Following the boss’s directives (experienced by 49%)

2. Meeting overly aggressive business or financial objectives (48%)

3. Helping the organization to survive (40%)

4. Meeting schedule pressures (35%)

5. Wanting to be a team player (27%)

Stanley Milgram, a professor of social psychology, conducted a series of troubling social

experiments demonstrating how good people are capable of physically harming others if

directed to do so by someone in authority willing to take responsibility for the act.

oThe results: 65% of the research subjects proceeded, at 15 volt increments of

increasing severity, to the maximum 450 volts of punishment despite the learner’s

agonizing pleas to stop.

oDuring the post-experiment debriefing, research subjects reported that they

continued to obey the experimenter’s commands even though their own

conscience urged them to stop physically harming the learner.

Behaving unethically to be a team player highlights the importance of an employee’s

sense of belongingness.

Lastly, a good person may behave unethically because the end goal is so essential that the

ends justify the means.

oExecutives may provide false financial statements to the public because they

believe this is the only way their companies can survive a difficult financial

situation.

oAn employee might provide a boss with false performance information so as to

protect his or her job status.

FAILURE TO REPORT UNETHICAL BEHAVIORS

Based on in-depth interviews with employees, researchers found that 85% had not raised

an important issue or concern to their bosses on at least one occasion. The top reasons for

not informing a manager about unethical behaviors were:

Fear of being labeled or viewed negatively by others, such as being considered a

troublemaker, tattletale, or complainer

Fear of damaging relationships with the person committing the unethical act

Fear of retaliation or punishment from the person committing the unethical act

Fear of negatively impacting the life of the person committing the unethical act

Fear of being blamed for the problem

Belief that management would not act on the issue if informed

The justifications provided earlier for unintended unethical behaviors and intentional

ethical behaviors also justify remaining silent.

These justifications for inaction are apparent in “Good Samaritan” research

studies that examine whether a person’s willingness to assist a stranger is based

on personality characteristics, issue sensitivity, or a contextual factor, such as

time.

Researchers examined what attributes best predicted which seminarians ignored

the person’s pleas for help.

Seminarians in a hurry were the least likely to help, even if they had scored highly

for serving others or had just practiced giving a sermon on the Good Samaritan.

Time pressures, and other situational factors, can blind good people to the ethical

ramifications of their decisions or influence them to behave unethically.

DISCUSSION ACTIVITY

Ask students if they have ever observed someone behaving unethically at work (or in school).

Then have them reflect on a situation where someone behaved unethically at work and they: (a)

took some positive action to correct the wrong behavior, and (b) did not take any action to

correct the wrong-doing. Why did they take action in one situation but not the other? List the

reasons for further discussion.

CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER AND ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS SUMMARY

Additional Question 1: What is ethics?

Ethics is the set of principles a person uses to determine whether an action is good or bad.

Interactions involving owners, customers, employees, lenders, suppliers, and government

officials have an ethical dimension.

An action sequence consists of the motivation behind the act, the act itself, and the

consequences of the act.

FOR DICUSSION: Describe a situation when someone said your action was ethical and one

situation when someone said your action was unethical. What reasons were given (or potentially

could be given) for these evaluations? Are these reasons appropriate reasons?

Additional Question 2: How often do employees experience ethical dilemmas?

People experience ethical dilemmas at work every day.

Just about every decision made during a day has ethical ramifications. The decision can be

FOR DISCUSSION: How long ago was the last time you faced an ethical dilemma?

Chapter Question 1: What are the most common types of unethical behaviors in

organizations?

Every organization is confronted with ethical and unethical behaviors.

The types of ethical misconduct observed most within the previous 12 months include:

company resource abuse, abusive or intimidating behavior towards employees, lying to

employees, and email or Internet abuse (18%)

FOR DISCUSSION: Describe an ethical dilemma you faced at work (full- or part-time job) or as

a member of an organization (church, nonprofit, sports, student group).

Chapter Question 2: In what ways do unethical behaviors increase organizational costs?

Managers often underestimate the costs associated with unethical behaviors. The most direct

cost is lost business.

Lawsuits are one of the most easily quantifiable costs associated with unethical behaviors.

Employee theft represents a cost directly incurred by the organization for hiring

untrustworthy employees. The biggest source of retail industry theft is employees, not

customers.

FOR DISCUSSION: Describe a situation when you observed an employee or customer stealing.

Did you do anything about it? Why?

Chapter Question 3: What are the competitive advantages of creating and sustaining an

ethical organization?

Attract and retain high quality employees.

Attract and retain high quality customers.

Attract and retain high quality suppliers.

FOR DISCUSSION: Describe a situation when you have chosen a job or purchased a product for

ethical considerations.

Additional Question 3: What are the different perspectives on human nature?

Human nature refers to the moral, psychological, and social characteristics of human beings.

Philosophers, theologians, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists have explored and

debated for centuries the moral dimensions of human nature at birth. No consensus has been

achieved.

FOR DISCUSSION: Do you believe people are born morally good, bad, or neutral? Why?

Chapter Question 4: Describe the six stages of moral developments.

Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987), influenced by the writings of Jean

Piaget, analyzed how children and adults from many cultures formed moral judgments in

response to a series of ethical dilemmas and conceptualized six stages of moral development.

Stage 1: Obedience-and-punishment orientation. Right is determined by obeying rules from a

superior authority and avoiding punishment.

State 5: Social contract orientation. Right is determined by preserving mutually agreed upon

human rights and changing unjust laws for the sake of community welfare. Individual

freedom should be limited only when such freedom interferes with other people’s freedom.

FOR DISCUSSION: Was it right or wrong for Heinz to steal the drug for his dying wife? Why?

Additional Question 4: What is the extent of lies and cheating in society?

Children lie and deceive others as soon as they can formulate and articulate alternative

strategies, which is soon after they can speak.

Within the past year, 82% of high school students have lied to a parent about something

significant and 62% lied to a teacher.

52% of college business students surveyed cheated on a test or written assignment

FOR DISCUSSION: How have you responded after finding a lost wallet or money that did not

belong to you, such as when a cashier returns too much change?

Chapter Question 5: Why do good people occasionally behave unethically?

Sometimes the unethical behavior is unintended. The person may have good motives, but

insufficient knowledge or awareness.

FOR DISCUSSION: Have you ever lied to a boss, customer or co-worker? Have you ever not

reported someone at work or school who behaved unethically? How did you justify these

decisions?

CHAPTER 1 KEY WORDS

Action sequence (p. 5): consists of the motivation behind the act, the act itself, and the

consequences of the act.

Altruistic behaviors (p. 22): the deliberate pursuit of actions intended to benefit the interests or

welfare of others.

Cognitive dissonance (p 20.): when an individual holds inconsistent or contradictory attitudes

and beliefs, which creates an unpleasant state of mind.

Conscience (p 16.): the inner sense of pure goodness that guides people when deciding that

something is right or wrong; many religions attribute it to the voice of God within us.

Ethics (p 5.): set of principles a person uses to determine whether an action is good or bad.

Good Samaritan (p. 25): someone willing to assist a stranger.

Human nature (p. 16): the moral, psychological, and social characteristics of human beings.

Inherited sin (p. 16): religious belief that a morally damaged soul joins the body at birth, the

damage attributed to Adam and Eve or previous ancestors.

Kohlberg, Lawrence (p. 18): Harvard psychologist (lived 1927–1987), influenced by the

writings of Jean Piaget, who sought to answer how children and adults from many cultures

formed moral judgments in response to a series of ethical dilemmas.

Moral imperatives (p 20.): principles originating in a person’s mind that compel people to

action.

Piaget, Jean (p. 17): among the first psychologists (lived 1896-1980) to outline stages of

cognitive development based on patterns he observed in children, including his own.

Stages of moral development (p. 18): an individual’s moral reasoning can sequentially progress

through six distinct stages – obedience-and punishment orientation (stage 1), instrumental

orientation (stage 2), good boy—nice girl orientation (stage 3), law-and-order orientation (stage

4), social contract orientation (stage 5), and universal ethical principles orientation (stage 6).

Stakeholder (p. 4): any person or organization that is affected by, or could affect, an

organization’s goal accomplishment.

Tabula rasa (p. 17): the mind as a blank slate on which people store moral rules and knowledge

based on life experiences.