Creating and Maintaining Ethical Standards within the Workplace

This essay discusses the critical role of ethical standards in the workplace, emphasizing their importance for customer satisfaction and employee morale. It differentiates between legal/ethical standards, which are based on laws and regulations, and moral-based ethical standards, which focus on doing the right thing. The essay highlights the responsibility of corporations to stay updated on legal changes and to establish internal standards that often exceed legal requirements. It also underscores the need for consistent training to ensure employees understand and adhere to these standards, preventing inadvertent breaches. Ultimately, the essay argues that a strong commitment to ethical practices reduces legal risks, boosts employee morale, and increases productivity, leading to a more positive and successful work environment. Desklib offers a wealth of resources, including solved assignments and past papers, to further explore this topic.

It is very important to create ethical standards at workplace. This is particularly important for
satisfied customers and happy employees. The reason is that when the ethical standards have
been set clearly and there is no ambiguity in this regard, there will be less issues related with
human resources. In the same way it also results in boosting the morale increasing productivity.
Ethical standards at the workplace are established by the laws and regulations that are applicable
in case of a particular fashion and also by which the company is trying to follow (Whitman,
Townsend, Hendrickson, 673).
The definition of legal/ ethical standards: legal and ethical standards can be described as the
policies opted by the company what are based on law applicable rules and regulations that have
been imposed by government or other regulatory bodies. Apart from defining the applicable law
for the company, they also define the Expectations for the employees come for the leaders of the
company and at the same time also set the protocol in case of any allegation of wrongdoing or
violation. For example the law provides person cannot harm person. On the other hand the
ethical standards of the company go beyond the law. The standards provide how going to deal
with the allegations of harassment, investigate and how it is going to take disciplinary action.
Therefore a company can have one set of internal standards even if the law enforcement has been
for dealing with the external, legal side of the issue (Kohls and Buller, 31).
The corporations have the responsibility remain aware of the changes taking place in the laws
and regulations and also to update discover as and when required. For example the mortgage
industry was required to update its ethical processes when the truth in lending act was introduced
as this legislation introduced changes in advertising and the explanation of rates so that the

consumers can be protected from any unethical practices adopted by the companies.
The definition of ethical standards based on morals: The moral based ethical standards of the
company are the standard that are related with doing the right thing. The standards can be
concerned with the law, regulations, human resource standards or customer service.
In case of the laws falling under morally based standards, it is for if it is going to exceed the law
(Brown and Trevino, 595). For example, when minimum wages had been set at a company at a
rate that is higher than the government rate, it has been done company for the betterment of its
employees. In the same way, a company can exceed the minimum safety standards. These can be
described as morally ethical that are based on legal standards. Apart from the law it is possible
that a company can offer unconditional bank guarantee to its consumers. Even if it is not
required under the law but it is the standard the company is trying to set (Fulmer, 307). The
company is aiming for higher level of ethics in the form of good business practice that results in
the loyalty consumers and set the tone for high consumer service by its employees in order to
make sure that the goods are delivered to the consumers without any incident (Brown, Trevino
and Harrison, 117).
Ethics at workplace: Most of the ethical policies of the company are and they need to be
published to the employees. Generally this is done in the form of handbook or a training manual
or a training manual. However this is not sufficient for making sure that the employees fully
understand and fulfill ethical standards that have been adopted by the company. Therefore, there
is need for regular and consistent training to help the employees in completely understanding the
Expectations of the company in this regard. At the same time it also helps the employees in
realizing that the situation can be an inadvertent breach of legal or ethical standards. For

example, there are many diversification standards not completely understood and are generally
violated accidentally like is where a particular employee is only trying to be funny (Ciulla, 159).
However, jokes can be considered as discriminatory or mean.
Therefore when business leaders required that follow the set level of ethics those who fail to do
so generally weed themselves out and leave the organization or they get fired out of repeated
violations. However, it is important that the leaders should make efforts to ensure that proper
persons are recruited who are able to meet the standards are compatible to the culture of the
company results in reducing legal risk, and happiness among the employees and consumer
conflict. By preventing such risks, it is possible to increase moral of the company and also
achieve greater productivity.

Bibliography
Brown, M. E., & Trevino, L. K., Ethical leadership: A review and future directions. The
Leadership Quarterly, 17 (6), 2006 595-616
Brown, M. E., Trevino, L. K., & Harrison, D. A., Ethical leadership: A social learning
perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision
Processes, 97 (2), 2005 117-134.
Ciulla, J. B. Integrating leadership with ethics: is good leadership contrary to human nature? In
P. J. Doh & S. A. Stumpf (Eds.), Handbook on responsible leadership and governance in global
business 2005 (pp. 159-179). Cheltenham UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited
Fulmer, R. M. The challenge of ethical leadership. Organizational Dynamics, 33 (3), 2004, 307-
317
Kohls, J. and Buller, P.,``Resolving cross-cultural ethical conflict: exploring alternative
strategies' ', Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 13, 1994, pp.31-8
Whitman, Michael E., Townsend, Anthony M., and Hendrickson, Anthony R.“Cross-National
Differences in Computer-Use Ethics: A Nine Country Study.” The Journal of International
Business Studies 30, no. 4 1999: 673–687