Answer to Question 1
Understanding the major causes of illegal and unethical behavior in the workplace will help you become sensitive to signals of escalating pressure to compromise your values. Unethical corporate behavior can have a number of causes:
a. Excessive emphasis on profits: Business managers are often judged and paid on their ability to increase business profits. This emphasis on profits might send a message that the end justifies the means.
b. Misplaced corporate loyalty: A misplaced sense of corporate loyalty might cause an employee to do what seems to be in the best interest of a company, even if the act is illegal or unethical.
c. Obsession with personal advancement: Employees who wish to outperform their peers or are working for the next promotion might feel that they cannot afford to fail. They might do whatever it takes to achieve the objectives assigned to them.
d. Expectation of not getting caught: Thinking that the end justifies the means, employees often believe illegal or unethical activity will never be discovered. Unfortunately, a great deal of improper behavior escapes detection in the business world. Believing no one will ever find out, employees are tempted to lie, steal, and perform other illegal acts.
e. Unethical tone set by top management: If top managers are not perceived as highly ethical, lower-level managers might be less ethical as a result. Employees have little incentive to act legally and ethically if their superiors do not set an example and encourage and reward such behavior.
f. Uncertainty about whether an action is wrong: Many times, company personnel are placed in situations in which the line between right and wrong is not clearly defined.
g. Unwillingness to take a stand for what is right: Often employees know what is right or wrong but are not willing to take the risk of challenging a wrong action. They might lack the confidence or skill needed to confront others with sensitive legal or ethical issues. They might remain silent and then justify their unwillingness to act.
Answer to Question 2
The contextual forces affecting business communication are:
a. Legal and ethical constraints
b. Diversity challenges
c. Changing technology
d. Team environment
Legal and ethical constraints: Legal and ethical constraints act as contextual or environmental forces on communication because they set boundaries in which communication rightfully occurs. International, federal, state, and local laws affect the way that various business activities are conducted. For instance, laws specify that certain information must be stated in messages that reply to credit applications and those dealing with the collection of outstanding debts. Furthermore, one's own ethical standards will often influence what he or she is willing to say in a message. For example, a system of ethics built on honesty might require that a message provides full disclosure rather than a shrouding of the truth. Legal responsibilities, then, are the starting point for appropriate business communication. One's ethical belief system, or personal sense of right and wrong behavior, provides further boundaries for professional activity.
The press is full of examples of unethical conduct in business and political communities, but unethical behavior is not relegated to the papers-it has far-reaching consequences. Those affected by decisions, the stakeholders, can include people inside and outside an organization. Employees and stockholders are obvious losers when a company fails. Competitors in the same industry also suffer, because their strategies are based on what they perceive about their competition. Beyond that, financial markets as a whole suffer due to erosion of public confidence.
Business leaders, government officials, and citizens frequently express concern about the apparent erosion of ethical values in society. Even for those who want to do the right thing, matters of ethics are seldom clearcut decisions of right versus wrong, and they often contain ambiguous elements. In addition, the pressure appears to be felt most strongly by lower-level managers, often recent business school graduates who are the least experienced at doing their jobs.
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