Organization Culture as a Precursor to Poor Employees' Behaviors

Organizations and Ethics
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Institutional Affiliation
Introduction
Since the invention of the printing press, the world has witnessed uncountable ethical dilemmas due to the advancement in technology. As information technology rapidly evolves, business owners and IT managers have to face the challenges of making sound decisions. For example, during the past decades, the problem of software piracy affected many businesses than it is today. Today, there are new ethical issues in information technology that managers have to resolve, such as customer data privacy protection and the effective ways to use artificial intelligence to abide by the law and meet customers' demands (Sherman, 2020). Notable issues frequently present in modern days include data protection and privacy, impacts caused by ransoms and ransomware, and the ever-advancing field of artificial intelligence. Of course, ethics within an organization does not necessarily have to start at the top. Still, it should be embraced by sound leadership that influences the organization's ethically based decisions, strategies, and goals which drive the firm forward. This paper presents an ethical situation that I have encountered within my organization and the steps it took to get there, analyzes whether or not the culture of the organization offered a setting that incubated this form of behavior, discusses the impact the situation had on employees and stakeholders and gives recommendations for how the firm could change to ensure this kind of action does not recur and how they could reform their ethical approaches if not already transformed.
Ethical Situation in Question and the Steps it Took to Get There
One of the ethical situations in my organization has been employee dismissal based on using their social media platforms outside workplaces (Thornthwaite, 2018). The dangers of posting on social media networks such as Facebook are not unique to a specific company. Many firms have witnessed similar scenarios where employees post sensitive information about their organizations that result in the dismissal of an employee in question. For instance, in Thompson v 360 Finance Pty Ltd (2021) FWC 2570, 360 Finance dismissed an employee following sexually explicit posts that involved a female colleague. In another example, a "naïve" teenage swim instructor was unfairly dismissed after a Facebook post recommending a rival company to a client. The Fair Work Commission (FWC) declined to provide any compensation following the dismissal for her actions on a private Facebook page (Cheng, 2021). Recently, a similar case happened in our organization where an employee was fired for body-shaming one of his overweight colleagues, claiming that the company was on the verge of making losses due to his laziness at the workplace. While these situations often occur in many organizations worldwide, the core problem that leads to such issues is poor employee orientation after recruitment. Before introducing new workers to an organization, organizations should conduct a thorough orientation of new employees to understand the company and work culture (Owino & Kibera, 2019). Since my organization has a poor orientation strategy, this unfortunate event was inevitable.
Organization Culture as a Precursor to Poor Employees' Behaviors
As mentioned above, the organizational culture in our firm provided a climate that nurtured this form of behavior where employees could exchange insults without being given a warning about their misconduct. The problem touches two specific departments: the human resource and the disciplinary departments within the company. Organizational culture is a critical element in employees, behaviors, and success (Gochhayat et al., 2017). Having weak organizational culture could affect employee motivation, escalate poor behaviors such as stealing, and encourage other undesirable traits. Gochhayat et al. (2017) define culture as the expression of fundamental beliefs, attitudes, beliefs, artifacts, values, and behaviors among workers. In this respect, various organizational cultures have predicted the organization's effectiveness, and stronger cultures are predictors of the success of firms. Besides, the role of human resource management is to set policies, strategies, and practices for managing workers n an organization (Tinti et al., 2017). In the case of our organization, there was poor communication about the policies that define the use of social media out of the workplace. At the same time, employees who were reported on bullying others received absolutely no warning over their misconducts. With such a setting, workers are bound to misbehave, knowing that they will not be punished due to their misconduct.
Impact the situation ha...