Organizational ethics, culture and values

Some years ago a sociologist Raymond Baumhart had asked business people of what they think ethics; most of the respond were right such as “ethics tell what is right and what is wrong”, ethics has to do with my religious feelings”, or, “the law require us to be ethical” and “ethics consists the standard behavior in the society aspects”, also there were some responded “I do not know what ethics means”. Eventually, these replies might be typical regarding to one’s thought, background, and perception. Indeed, the meaning of ethics is hard to pin down and the views about many people about ethics are shaky (Meyer, 1987).

Many people tend to associate ethics with their feelings, religion, law, and being “the same” as whatever society accepts. Essentially, being ethical is clearly not a matter of following those mentions above. For example, identifying ethics with religious, then it can be considered that only religious people are ethical. In reality, ethics applies as much to the behavior of the atheist as to that of the saint (Meyer, 1987). Thus religion can set it ethical standard or intense motivation for ethical behavior.

As a result, Meyer (1987) ethic refers to a well-founded standard of right and wrong (value) that have been thought to a person since he or she was very young (culture). The standards entail to rational obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud as unethical yet simultaneously ethical standards also include those that virtues the value of honesty or loyalty and rights; such as, the right to life, to be free and to have privacy. Such standards are sufficient and satisfactory in ethics because they are supported by consistent and well-founded reasons. In conclusion, as mention during debate held in tutorial, rationality is needed for one to decide what is ethical or unethical depending to his or her own personal standards.

Leadership and Culture

A strong leadership will be able to establish an organizational culture which reflects through their values and beliefs. Additionally, strong organizational culture capable to attract workers who find that culture attractive even though some workers might have a little bit of disagreement; they will tend to hide their beliefs in order to fit into the culture of the organization they are working for. In this contemporary world, culture can not be dictated anymore from the top levels. In conclusion this topic refers to understanding that leaders have no authority to dictate culture, yet they can certainly play a role in shaping it. They set the priorities then the workers will properly staffed, well-resourced, and well-trained with clear direction and goals. In addition, a leader in a company can endorse a positive organizational culture by setting priorities form all members’ need as well as recognition to the organization’s success. This culture will shape and affects the member’s beliefs and attitudes. As agreed by Morley & Schockley-Zalabak (1991) that leader establishes the corporate value system and shapes the culture also sets the rules that form organizational behavior

Power, hegemony and control in organizations: Some critical approaches

Controlling the organizational discourse is one of the crucial aspects to understand from this topic. Mumby (1995) a critical scholar believes that power relationship are produced and reproduced through organization discourse. Researchers also believe that the organizational behavior is socially constructed through communicative interaction. Moving on, these traditions include the use of critical studies that have been developed from hundred years of capitalistic growth in economy; such as the Karl Marx legacy, critical theory, and postmodernism and feminist theory (Gender Studies), they all have the same assumption that language and discourse are central. There are number of ways in which organizational discourse appears as “producing” or “reproducing” the power structure in the working environment. For instance, choices of word in a sentence could have different meaning for different people with different background or culture. Clair (1996, in Miller p. 105) examined the ways in which the phrase “real job” (as in “when are you going to get a real job?”) contains different understanding. For the political function, the creator of rules, norms, beliefs, and values in their organization, might implying that real job are not the kind of job held by college students. Or, the jobs that have been done by other types of employment are not a “real job”. This seems misleading, because the setting for a social-discourse in an organization is constructed in such a way, the employees are then having to believe. If decision is always made from top to bottom, then it will only support the dominant coalition. Moreover, this case can even be worst when it touch issue such as gender. Therefore, Karl Marx had urged that workers should revolt and overturn this system.

Organizational culture and processes of assimilation

Organizational culture is an approach in organization and communication which descried by an anthropological perspective such as history, language, values and beliefs, customs, artifacts, rituals, celebrations, legends, myths and interpretations of experience of an organization. Organizational culture is defined as a collection of values and belief that are created by the member within the organization. This culture has the control in the way members interact with each other within and outside the organization and often it is mentally shared, constructed, and difficult to change. However, organizations, often have holistic and aesthetic moral standards at the deepest level; taboo elements that cannot be discussed inside the organization. This insight offers a higher understanding and difficulty especially for the newcomers that attempt to assimilate with the organizational culture. Thus, organizational that likely to change agents usually fail to accomplish their goal because it takes time to become acclimatize. As a result, orienting, socializing, training, formal and informal mentoring, and information giving and seeking are the chief means of learning task priorities and preferred manner of role performance (Katz & Kahn 1978). Often, newcomers have a competency to be a “role-making” that attempts to change the cultural patterns. Often an organization has an assumption that change is good; Schein “onion” model.

The organic metaphor and some systems theories

The purpose of this lecture is recognizing the difference between a “machine metaphor” and a “system metaphor”; systems metaphor does not see organization as complex as machine metaphor. It works from the metaphoric concept that an organization is like an organism (Miller, 2009). Meaning, organization should be conceptualized in behavior and interact within it environment in order to survive. Further, there are three exemplary and unique of systems metaphor theories that relevant to organization communication: firstly, Cybernetic (Weiner 1948), Consists of several inter-related components, highlighted feedback and self-steering regulation towards a goal, secondly Weick’s Theory, emphasized in making sense of equivocality in the information environment and lastly New Science, emphasized complexity as the nature of self-organizing systems. In group discussion of Sense Making after Acquisition case analysis; our group believed that Weick’s Theory existed in this case. Equivocality or uncertainty were exists because of many different ways in which information are interpreted by Helen. Moreover, through network analysis, the relationships she made around, creating uncertain and hinder her thoughts. Helen was too dependent on other and stiff; she kept on waiting instead of making up solution for her own. The best solution in Helen’s case is Retention. As Weick’s (1979) noted that when someone having too many information that resulting his or her having difficulties to take action, retention is suggested to form and to make sense of future uncertainty of information environment (p. 132).