Ethics

Shamia Salley

MGT 7504

March 17, 2014

In reading the first chapter, I found that there were two factors that managers take into consideration when

trying to understand what makes employees dishonest. One factor is vertical fairness. This is the relationship between the employee and the organization. The reason I paid close attention to this particular matter is because in my employment situation, I can say that there is a low level of vertical fairness. Employees feel as though the company does not act fair when handling situations. Therefore, employee morale is low because the attitude becomes negative and employees wonder why should they put forth their best efforts if they know good actions won't be recognized. I know of a situation in where an employee was passed up for a promotion because of personal feelings. This employee felt as though he had all the qualifications and knowledge to do the job, but yet he was not given the opportunity. I feel if a company has employees that want to move up within the company, and they have the qualifications, decisions should be made off of that.

The second factor that managers should use to determine the honesty of employees is the horizontal fairness factor. Managers look at how fairly employees are treated compared to their peers. In the organization I work for, I hear it all too often how certain employees “get away” with things because of who they are and how they interact with their superiors. I have seen so many situations at my job where people are promoted because they have developed a friendship/relationship with someone in a managerial position. Sometimes they receive the simplest benefit, like longer lunch breaks and so forth. There are some employees that are not concerned with these types of situations, but then there are other employees who are more vocal about it. These are the ones that develop the ‘I don’t care’ attitude.

This chapter also states that businesses should clearly communicate that...