Ethical Performance

(Dimitriadis, 2019)

Organization’s ethics are the way employees do their work.  This could be perceived as ethical or unethical. Letendre (2015) defines organizational ethics as: organizational practices and structures which includes the values such as fairness, honor, compassion etc. in their day to day operations. There is no single set of ethics guidance or standard that is perfect to every company.

Eg: smoking could be prohibited by only by few organizations.

Most of the organizations have a set of code of ethics which is a good indicator of organization’s understanding of ethical behaviours (Wood, 2000). Organization’s ethical values are the basic guidelines to differentiate what is right and what is wrong, and organization’s rules and regulations pave the way to achieve these ethical values (Yankelovich, 1981).

The most important factor for the success of the organization is employee’s performance which is related to employees’ perception of organization’s ethics (Pettijohn et al., 2008). During the initial recruitment, interviewee is evaluated to identify the personal characteristics. According Hoy and Miskel (1996), employee performance is affected by individual characteristics and ethics. Employee’s performance can be measured by the amount of sales and production rate, managers rating of an employee and self-appraisal (Porter and Lawler, 1968)

It is important for employees to achieve targets or exceed the KPI or performance level. Therefore, employees may sometimes seek illegal ways to achieve those. These illegal ways are accepted neither by organization nor society (Imam et al., 2013). Organizations formulate code of conduct or employee handbook to instruct their employees how they should behave, work, communicate, dress, act, respond etc. which are in line with organization’s culture and acceptable to most of the employees.

As stated by Salahudin et al. (2016), there is a significant relationship between organizational ethics and Job performance. Individual employee will perform high when organizational ethics are implemented. Overall, it will be resulted in greater performance of the organization. It is a must to include code of ethics for employees as guidance, and management should encourage everyone in the organization to practice it to improve the performance. Finally, it should be noted that, in addition to compensation and reward system, organizational ethics play an important role in employee performance.

References;

Dimitriadis, C. (2019) Digital ethics rising in importance. Available at: https://www.csoonline.com/article/3396037/digital-ethics-rising-in-importance.html (Accessed: 10 January 2020).

Hoy, K., Miskel, C. (1996) Educational administration: Theory, research, and practice. 5^th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Imam, A., Sattar, A. and Muneer, S. (2013) ‘The impact of Islamic work ethics on employee performance: testing two models of personality x and personality y’, Science International (Lahore), 25(3), pp. 611-617.

Letendre, M. (2015) ‘Organizational Ethics’, Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics, pp. 1-10.

Pettijohn, C., Pettijohn, L., & Taylor, J. (2008) ‘Salesperson perceptions of ethical behaviors: Their influence on job satisfaction and turnover intentions’, Journal of Business Ethics, 78(4), pp. 547–557.

Porter, W. and Lawler, E. (1968) Managerial attitudes and performance. Homewood, Ill: Irwin.

Salahudin, S., Alwi, M., Baharuddin, S. and Halimata, S. (2016) ‘The Relationship between Work Ethics and Job Performance’, International Conference on Business and Economics, pp. 465-471.

Wood, G. (2000) ‘A cross cultural comparison of the content of codes of ethics: USA, Canada and Australia’, Journal of Business Ethics, 25, pp. 287-298.

Yankelovich, D. and Immerwahr, J. (1984) 'Putting the work ethic to work Society’, 21(2), pp. 58-76.

Organizational Culture and Motivation

(McGregor and Doshi, 2015) 

Organizations believe a strong organizational culture is critical to success. Culture is a part of internal environment, and it is the set of values, beliefs, behaviors, customs, and attitudes that helps the employees to understand how it does things, what it considers important etc. (Ricky, 2007). Culture seems like some magical force. Most leaders manage the culture based on their perception, but it seems only few know how to control. Organizational culture should motivate employees to achieve organizational goals (Sempane et al., 2002).

It is important to understand why we work for some organization and how well we work. Deci and Ryan (1985) identifies six main reasons why people work for an organization, and they are play, purpose, potential, emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia. First three motives, while the latter three hurts. Organization with high performing culture maximizes play, purpose and potential while minimizing the emotional pressure, economic pressure and inertia. McGregor and Doshi (2015) explain these six reasons in the following way;

Play is when employee is motivated by the work itself. Eg: A nurse at play takes care of the patients with smiling face.

Purpose is when result of the work fits the employee’s value. Eg: A doctor is satisfied when he saves a patient who was in a critical condition.

Potential is when the work outcome benefits the employee’s need or enhances work potential. Eg: A doctor is doing his job to become a consultant.

Emotional pressure is when an employee works due to some external force/pressure.

Economic pressure is when an external force makes an employee work and may due to gain a reward or avoid a punishment.

Inertia is when an employee can’t identify why he is working.

Further, motivated staffs feel responsible for the organizational success (Sokro, 2012). According to Hofstede (2001), recognition of the work done by the employees will make them work harder in future. A great organizational culture should motivate people to perform at work rather than just work. This kind of performing culture is a great advantage for organizations. Culture could play a greater role in survival of an organization. Therefore, leaders must carve the organizational culture, and should not consider culture as a magical force.

References

Deci, E. and Ryan, R. (1985) Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. New York: Plenum Press.

Hofstede, G. (2001) Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations. 2^nd ed. London: Sage Publication Limited.

McGregor, L. and Doshi, N. (2015) How Company Culture Shapes Employee Motivation. Available at: https://hbr.org/2015/11/how-company-culture-shapes-employee-motivation (Accessed: 08 January 2020).

Ricky, A. (2007). Fundamentals of Management. 5^th ed. USA: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Sempane, M., Rieger, H. and Roodt, G. (2002) ‘Job Satisfaction in relation to organisational culture’, SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 28(2), pp. 23-30.

Sokro, E. (2012) ‘Analysis of the relationship that exists between organisational culture, motivation and performance’, problems of MANAGEMENT in the 21^st century, 3(1), pp. 106-119.

Effect on Human Resource by Globalization

(UTSA, 2020)

With the boom of world economy in early 1980s, many new companies started to emerge. Competition led to think about cheap labour and economies of scale. Movement of labour, production, knowledge etc were inevitable to achieve the economies of scale. Thus, companies tried to attract labour (eg: cheap, skilled, semi-skilled etc) from other countries or outsourced/subcontracted the production to a cheap labour market.

Outsourcing or subcontracting is not always easy. Sometimes, even the brand name could be affected by the actions of subcontracted/outsourced party. Below is an example of how an American company, Nike, got affected by the labour issue in its subcontracted manufacturing plant in Indonesia.

In the early 1990s, Nike products were being manufactured in several Indonesian factories. Some of the factories were manged by Nike’s Korean suppliers. These factories came under greater scrutiny for labour exploitation, poor working conditions, low salary etc. Plight of these poor workers exposed to American media. Initially, managers at Nike ignored these criticisms by arguing that the Indonesian factories were not owned and operated by them, but by the independent subcontractors. Due to the pressure from many stakeholders, ultimately, Nike instructed subcontractors to raise the wages and improve the working conditions (Locke, 2002).

Another issue faced mainly by companies situated in developing countries is “Globalization of human capital”, which is different to “brain drain”. Globalization of human capital mainly related to Skill migration (Khadria, 2000) which can be further divided into professionals and students (who will become professionals in future) (Khadria, 2001). This migration may due to the lack of job opportunities, career development, salary, job satisfaction etc in the home country.

Global companies require movement of international personnel, especially in manufacturing and service-oriented companies. This includes recruiting non-citizen and moving current employees internationally for both short and long-term assignments. These companies make decisions for global operations of their business believing that their employees could be able to travel to most of the world to perform the assigned duties (Keely, 2003).

Eg: Training facilitator should be able to travel to any country to deliver the required training.

Finally, globalization introduces many new challenges to the company. Some of them are unpredictable and uncontrollable. It is also vital keep common corporate culture, HRM practices etc throughout its offices and it is HR’s responsibility to manage them efficiently and effectively.

References

Keely, C. (2003) ‘Globalization Transforms Trade-Migration Equation’, International Migration, 4(1), pp. 87-92.

Khadria, B. (2001) ‘Shifting paradigms of globalization: the twenty‐first century transition towards generics in skilled migration from India’, International Migration, 39(5), pp. 45-71.

Locke, R. (2002) The Promise and Perils of Globalization: The Case of Nike. Industrial Performance center, MIT.

UTSA (2020) Overseas Jobs. Available at: https://careercenter.utsa.edu/resources/overseasjobs-com/ (Accessed: 01/07/2020).