Ethics in Organizational Culture

According to cooper, ethics is essential to organizational administrators who have multiple roles and accompanying responsibilities in their respective positions and need to be accountable. In view of these special responsibilities and hierarchy within the organizations, professional ethics would guide them in their actions and these values permeate through the whole organization promoting ethical conduct among employees. Objective responsibility in their conduct and the fact that they are held accountable for their actions is a motivation to think and act ethically (cooper T, 2006).

Formulation of policy is based on values, beliefs, attitudes and experiences which in turn are derived from organizational structure and culture. This influence the created policies which would reflect the organization's specified set of values, norms and attitudes towards the directed issues. These may be ethical or unethical depending on how one subjectively judges these policies in cases where they contravene public good (cooper T, 2006) without referring to the values and norms espoused by the organization.

Having chosen this simple policy as an example - "the company is committed to ensuring accessibility of its library section to all employees"- the values of equity and equality espoused by the organizational culture can easily be taken note of among others such as its attitude of non-discrimination towards all employees. Organizational culture inculcates its attributes in the policies it creates through instilling this in the leaders, administrators and employees.

This may policy may present unethical dilemma in cases where it contravenes personal ethical values of its employees considering the diversity of their cultural backgrounds such as in a  case where an employee beliefs the higher hierarchy in the organization deserve some exclusivity this case.

Based on this ethical decision making model of five steps (Swinton L, 2007), I would recommend solution by:

• Defining the ethical dilemma and its details
• Identifying the involved values of interdependent and mutual respect for all employees.
• Identifying the principles of moral philosophy especially of equity and equality. Of critical note is the obligation of administrators to adhere to set professional ethics and setting precedence to other employees.
• Evaluate alternative decisions
• Take action.