The Ethical Behavior of Employees Within an Organization, Essay Example

Discuss and explain how corporate culture influences the ethical behavior of employees within an organization. Give examples as appropriate.

Corporate culture influences the ethical behavior of employees within an organization because the behaviors that the top executives engage in are typically behaviors that the employees engage in, whether this behavior is expected or not. Therefore, if the top executives are prone to engage in unethical behavior, their employees will be more likely to do so as well because there will be no punishment for this behavior and occasionally reward.

An example of this is the Enron scandal. While this scandal was directly related to former executives Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, and others, their suggestions and commands to employees was necessary to carry out their plan. Ultimately, they adjusted the books to make the company look like it was earning more profit than it really was, which was meant to convince shareholders that the company was doing well and should invest more money. The company’s financial statements were often made to be complex and confusing to its viewers, which persuaded many stakeholders that the company was doing well. To ensure this would work, Enron recruited the help of its accountants and other employees to make this data seem believable.

While Enron’s executives were behaving unethically by enforcing this scandal and asking their employees to follow suit, the participation of the employees was unethical as well. If this breach of ethics was not standard in Enron, it is likely that many of their employees would have refused participation. However, this was not seen and as a consequence, the company fell and hurt many individuals who were not involved in this deception.