Abstract
The business largely depends on its culture for adequate operationalization of its activities. This means that for a business to survive, particularly in the current competitive century, it must shape its culture according to ethical needs, goals and objectives. Ethics is the study of morality and takes various forms affecting a business, from the employees to the management and their transactions. This assignment conducts a literature review on the ideologies of shaping organizational culture and ethics.
Key Words: Ethics, Organizational Culture, Morals.
Introduction
Business environments have experienced radical changes, instigating business surroundings that favour their operations internally and externally- that is, micro and macro environments. Internally, most corporate organizations have massively adopted the concept of business cultures bounded on ethical considerations and principles. Business culture denotes the belief and behavioural system that determines the mechanisms in which the employees and management of a company interact and subsequently handle external business transactions (Ridden, 2018). In most cases, business environments are implied contrast to the express definition and are established cumulatively from the behaviours of the human capital an organization hires (Khan, 2018).
From a layman’s perspective, ethics is attributed to what ought to be (Lander University, 2011). That is, specific societal standards and expectations govern individual interactions socially and in their professional capacities. Ethics within an organization govern the business cultures practised by reiterating the organisation’s code of conduct and expectations on various organizational matters (Toppinen, 2019). Ethics influences business cultures to varying degrees, from the employees to the management’s conduct, practices, and interactions.
Findings
Implied Business Environment (IBE): According to a study conducted by the International Journal of Business Environment (IJBE) in determining how businesses behave in distinct environments, environmental dynamism is a recurrent organizational theory and a tool for strategic management literature. Various organizations adopt “working” business cultures based on immediate factors that influence their operationalization; these factors can emanate internally within the organization, such as strategic plans, change management, business economics, and externally including legislative requirements, change in policy, or development in social concerns that have direct impact to a company’s mode of operations (International Journal of Business Environment, 2021). Consequently, implied business culture is shaped by several internal and external factors that have a tool for a company’s operations.
Moreover, IBE develops relevance based on the instability severance, or turbulence on primary operations concern incorporating the market or prevailing industry conditions alongside the general social, economic, political, and technological changes. The ability of an organization to readily adapt to the changing business environment is strategic to its survival.
Ethics in Business Cultures: A study conducted by Pitak-Arnnop et al., 2012, sought to analyze ethical perspectives and determine how ethics shaped business cultures. Based on this study, various distinctions of ethics exist- as a moral aspect, normative or prescriptive ethics, and analytic ethics-Metaethics (Pitak-Arnnop,2012). These three forms of ethics are expressed on different levels of an organization, impacting intrapersonal needs, interpersonal, employee conduct, relation with the management, and the overall operations of an organization. Business operations from employees’ needs, departmental functions, and overall interactions shape the business cultures and thus must be anchored on ethics (Krishnamurthy, 2011).
Ethical Shaping Business Cultures: According to The World Medical Association (WMA), ethics- morality is perceived as the dimension value of human abilities to make decisions and regulate their behaviours. In this case, morals incorporate concepts of virtues, rights, and responsibilities that are the standards of a working business environment (WMA, 2021). Therefore, in shaping business culture, moral ethics that emanate from the company stakeholders is fundamental, as it defines good and bad conduct and the expected moral standards employees and management should conduct themselves. Moral ethics is often expressed in the code of conduct of most organizations.
Conclusion, Recommendations, and Suggestions for further study
Business cultures are a formidable part of an organization and reflect primarily on their position as social entities. Businesses, particularly in the contemporary century, have invested in identifying strategies that would culminate in appealing business cultures that reflect on their position as an organization and align with the core mandate of existence. Therefore, businesses have invested in ethical considerations in shaping their cultures from internal to external needs. Businesses need to adopt morality standings from their code of conduct, interaction, vision and mission statements, and mottos and slogans in shaping their working cultures. Organizations are of various sizes, with the largest being globalized and having operations in various nations where moral-ethical needs may differ based on the analysis criteria. Therefore, future researchers need to induce an evidence-based approach in formulating a universal standard of ethical approaches in guiding business cultures.
References
International Journal of Business Environment. (2021). https://www.inderscience.com/jhome.php?jcode=ijbe
Khan, M. A., & Law, L. S. (2018). The role of national cultures in shaping the corporate management cultures: A three-country theoretical analysis. In Organizational Culture. IntechOpen.
Krishnamurthy, P. (2011). An introduction to ethics. Available at SSRN 1781502.
Lander University. (2011). Morals and ethics. Philosophy. https://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/types.html
Pitak-Arnnop, P., Dhanuthai, K., Hemprich, A., & Pausch, N. C. (2012). Morality, ethics, norms and research misconduct. Journal of Conservative Dentistry: JCD, 15(1), 92.
Ridden, P. (2018). Shaping culture. Australian Educational Leader, 40(4), 36-39.
Toppinen, A., Sauru, M., Pätäri, S., Lähtinen, K., & Tuppura, A. (2019). Internal and external factors of competitiveness shaping the future of multistory wooden construction in Finland and Sweden. Construction Management and Economics, 37(4), 201-216.
WMA. (2021). Medical ethics. WMA – The World Medical Association – The World Medical Association. https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/
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