Several guidelines, or ethical screens, have been developed to help leaders or other influence agents decide whether a given act is ethical or unethical. The following questions should help Gordon evaluate the ethics of his decision:
Is it right?
Is it fair?
Who gets hurt?
Would you be comfortable if the details of your decision or actions were made public in the media or through e-mail?
What would you tell your child, sibling, or young relative to do?
How does it smell?
In order to create an organizational culture that encourages ethical behavior, Brian can take any of the following steps:
Provide strategic leadership of social responsibility and ethics.
Create a pleasant workplace.
Place company interests over personal interests.
Provide training in ethics and social responsibility.
Accept whistleblowers.
Develop formal mechanisms for dealing with ethical problems.
Establish written codes of ethical conduct.
Jennifer can take any of the following steps to achieve her goal of building a community:
Help build a sustainable environment.
Engage in social entrepreneurship.
Engage in philanthropy.
Chapter_07_Power_Politics_And_Leadership
Empowerment is most likely to create disharmony and dysfunction when workers _____.
_____ refers to an individual’s sense of having a choice in initiating and regulating actions.
Jeff should also focus on reducing organizational politics in his company. Setting good examples at the top of the organization can help reduce the frequency and intensity of organizational politics. When leaders are nonpolitical in their actions, they demonstrate in subtle ways that political behavior is not welcome.
Company leadership team must sometimes find the right balance between control and empowerment. Companies generally need more control in times of distress. Once Jeff has steered the company towards the right course, he should encourage more empowerment so that managers and workers can figure out how to implement the new policies and practices.
In its basic meaning, empowerment refers to passing decision-making authority and responsibility from managers to group members. Almost any form of participative management, shared decision making, and delegation can be regarded as empowerment. Impact, a component of empowerment, is the degree to which the worker can influence strategic, administrative, or operating outcomes on the job. Greta should empower the manager and employees of the store along all four components: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact.
Building relationships is a key part of success at the work place. If Taylor wants to repair the damage cause by his Machiavellian tendencies he can use any of the following strategies aimed at building relationships:
1) Display loyalty: A loyal worker is valued because organizations prosper more with loyal than with disloyal employees. Blind loyalty—the belief that the organization cannot make a mistake—is not called for because most rational organizations welcome constructive criticism.
2) Be courteous, pleasant, and positive: Polite behavior provides an advantage because many people believe that civility has become a rare quality.
3) Ask advice: Asking advice on work-related topics builds relationships with other employees. Asking another person for advice—someone whose job does not require giving it—will usually be perceived as a compliment.
Taylor must also refrain from unethical political behaviors such as backstabbing, setting a person up for failure, engage divide-and-rule strategies in his team, or play territorial games.
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