Organizational Behavior (Stephen Robbins)

other accounting scandals. In Canada, more than 120 ethics specialists now offer services
as in-house moral arbitrators, mediators, watchdogs, and listening posts. Some work
at Canada’s largest corporations, including the CIBC, Canada Post, Magna International,
Royal Bank of Canada, and McDonald’s Canada. These corporate ethics officers hear
about issues such as colleagues making phone calls on company time, managers yelling
at their employees, product researchers being asked to fake data to meet a deadline, or
a company wanting to terminate a contract because the costs are higher than antici-
pated. Ethics professor Wayne Norman of the Université de Montréal believes that ethics
officers are a positive trend, noting, “all sorts of studies show the companies that take
ethics seriously tend to be more successful.”^88
Many corporations are also developing codes of ethics. For example, about 60 per-
cent of Canada’s 650 largest corporations have some sort of ethics code.^89 Having a cor-
porate ethics policy is not enough; employees must be instructed in how to follow the
policy. Yet only about 39 percent of Canadian firms provided
training in ethical decision making in 2000, although this was
up from 21 percent in 1997. While no comparable Canadian
data are available, a survey of employees in US businesses with
ethics codes found that 75 percent of those surveyed had
observed ethical or legal violations in the previous 12 months,
including deceptive sales practices, unsafe working conditions,
sexual harassment, conflicts of interest, and environmental
violations.^90 Companies with codes of ethics may not do
enough monitoring. For instance, David Nitkin, president of
Toronto-based EthicScan Canada, an ethics consultancy, notes
that “only about 15% of [larger Canadian corporations with
codes of ethics] have designated an ethics officer or ombuds-
man” or provide an ethics hotline, and that less than 10 percent
offer whistle-blower protection.^91 OB in Action—Developing a
Meaningful Code of Ethicsshows how to implement codes of
ethics in organizations.
Only 14 percent of companies evaluate their ethics-related
performance, suggesting that most are not focused on improv-

Chapter 9Decision Making, Creativity, and Ethics 317

Unethical

Unethical

Unethical

Ethical

No

No

No

Ye s

Ye s Ye s

Does the decision

respect the

rights of the

individuals

affected?

Is the decision

motivated by

self-serving

interests?

Is the decision

Question 1 fair and equitable?

Question 2

Question 3

EXHIBIT 9-8 Is a Decision Ethical?

Source:Based on G. F. Cavanagh, D. J. Moberg, and M. Valasquez, “The Ethics of Organizational Politics,” Academy of Management Journal,

June 1981, pp. 363–374.

Canada Post

http://www.canadapost.ca

McDonald’s Canada

http://www.mcdonalds.ca

OB IN ACTION

Developing a Meaningful Code

of Ethics

➔Clearly state basic principlesand expectations.

➔Realistically focus on potential ethical dilem-

masthat employees face.

➔Distributethe codeto all employees.

➔Train individualsso that they understand the

code.

➔Enforce penalties for violating of the code.

Source: Based on W. E. Stead, D. L. Worrell, and J. G.

Stead, “An Integrative Model for Understanding and

Managing Ethical Behavior in Business Organizations,”

Journal of Business Ethics9, no. 3 (March 1990), pp.

233–242.