Raising Ethical Issues at Work

Gentile, M. (2010). A beginner’s guide to raising ethical issues at work. Retrieved February 28, 2010 from: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/02/you_know_whats_right_but.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

This article, published on the Harvard Business Review website, discusses ways for employees to deal with ethical issues that arise at work. The author states that most workers want to be ethical but many, when faced with an issue, make excuses such as ‘everyone else is doing it’ or ‘no one is going to be hurt by this’, etc. She then gives some recommendations in how workers should deal with these situations. First, she states that employees should understand that ethical dilemmas are a normal part of a job. Then, treat the issue just as you would any other business situation and deal with it accordingly and tackle it head-on. Additionally, you should play to the psychological biases of your co-workers you are dealing with on the issue by identifying short-term wins that would result from the more ethical behavior. This article is very basic but makes some good points that manager should consider and study more. Ethical behavior should be the priority of all businesses and is very important to the success of a business.