Business Ethics and unethical practices- a debate

Dear All,

I am raising a new hot topic for debate and discussion. Over the years being in the HR profession, I was closely watching,experiencing and hearing the unethical practices which exists in many businesses. I have also noticed that couple of companies are very good at ethical practices and known for their people friendly practices. Now-a-days in many organisations lot of unethical practices exists like people forced to do personal work of their bosses, you need to give in unwanted favours for getting career moves, better increment ,Getting short-listed for a plum posting etc.I don't want to elaborate much on personal favours and is a weed in IT as well as ITES business but is less in other sectors. The practice of getting financial and non-financial gratification from vendors and suppliers is also widely prevalent and recently a major MNC was in news for that. This is very high in the manufacturing organisations. Other practices like victimisation of the whistle blower, bullying, unwanted scolding in public etc. are also noticed. In most of the cases the senior guys will get away with this and the junior guys will be the sufferer.

I request the learned professionals across the globe to suggest the ways and means to cope up with this menace and how to eliminate these practices from the business. Your contributions will be much valuable for the young professionals, who are facing these kind of situations by themselves or can help the affected employees. You may critically evaluate the topic and give your inputs.

I personally hope and trust that this would be really interesting topic for the December month and with your contributions we all could make a New year resolution of making our organisations ethical in their practices.

Regards,

Roy.J.George

Response by Prof. T.V Rao

From: Rao TV
To: roygeorge@isteel.in
Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2006 11:54 AM
Subject: Ethics
Dear Roy George:

Thanks for initiating discussion on this topic. I think "Values and Ethics" is an important part of any Nation, Organization or Society. Like many others I am deeply pained to see these not being paid attention to and some times I feel we may be leading ourselves to destruction.

I think the root cause is the transition we are going through in our society. Unlike in the past today young persons can aspire to have their own house, car, and enough savings by his mid thirties and join the club of the neo-rich. As you see scope you become ambitious. You see other people rich and you aspire to become one and the race starts. The new economy industry has fuelled this race. This is both good and bad. We are enjoying the good part of it as a Nation and as a privileged class in the society. But we are doing very little to contain its side effects.

The most unfortunate part of this is HR Managers themselves have added in many cases to the declining values. I am told that HR Managers have a cut in the fee they pay to recruitment agencies and in the consulting projects they give to consultants. I also see HR Managers having no commitment to their profession or organization. The HR community at top levels is a good example of playing musical chairs. This is highly evident in the IT and other new economy industry. Every now and then they change jobs from one company to another for a 50% or 100% more hike. They seem to become real Change Agents- people who change their job every now and then without changing anything else. The organizations themselves are facilitating the same.

In nineties when one HR Manager applied for a job with CMC and by the time he came for an interview with CMC he already changed his job and yet came for an interview to be considered by CMC, the Chairman CMC (Dr. P P Gupta) lot his temper, refused to interview him and sent him back with a long lecture on the need for commitment to an organization by HR professionals. To day I think many Chairmen go out of way to grab people from ach other than to discourage people from shifting. The problem therefore lies with HR managers themselves. The HR Schools have done nothing in this direction. They do not even promote a code of ethics or conduct. The Professional bodies like NHRDN have designed a code of conduct but hardly did anything thereafter to enforce the same.

This is going to be major issue. I am dreading situation where a young man becomes millionaire at the age of 35 or 40, after having a disturbed family life spends the rest of his life repenting about what he could have done at early years of his career. Recently I was talking to a Psychiatrist from NIMHANS and was told that they get innumerable cases of depression and the like among the young. This is the price we are paying for our “economic growth”.

There are a lot of issues but we need to tackle them. The Academy of HRD (www.ahrd.org) in the US has developed an excellent code of conduct (Ethics and values) for HR professionals. I think it is high time some such thing is enforced by Professional bodies and educational institutions. More than any one some organization like CII should step in and develop a HR code of conduct to be abided by all CEOs and HR Directors and ensure that it is implemented..
Thanks for initiating this debate.
T V Rao

Response By Ms. Nanda, Pondicherry

: Nanda Bhaskar
To: http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/HRInnovators/post?postID=MPb0rOZ_BohwqCfgKG681q80yqPrlGM7m8gvVyPdMsFTCqPMzmeGDtuNvn2p-0kGSc3L5MxdQLa4-Tcnrok-o5vGHGQHww
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 2:26 PM
Subject: [Rajagiricollege] Business ethics and unetical practices- a debate
This is my response to the mail on Business ethics andunethical practicesInitiating a debate on ethical and non ethicalpractices in work place is a need of the hour. Thereis a lot of frustration among the employees at alllevels in the present working set up in India. Misuseof power is the main reason for many of the unethicalpractices in workplace. To my knowledge, not onlyprivate organizations even autonomous bodies supportedby government also contribute to the unethicalpractices. To respect the dignity and individuality ofan individual, one of the basics which we learned fromour social work theory is out of question in manyplaces. The pitiest part of it is that the people whosuffer are hardworking, genuine, trustworthy,talented, capable and so on. Just because they lackthe so called trait of chamcha… they are targeted.Here what I understand is that many of the managersare not aware of what a good manager is expected to inhis/her official capacity. I mean his/herresponsibility to the staff, their welfare, staffmorale, discrimination aspects etc. These things aremostly taught in our childhood, some we acquire as wegrow (socialization) and through training in officiallevels. I strongly feel that training on the roles andduties of a good manager is lacking in many firms andworkshops on these may be arranged by professionals inthese lines and make it mandatory to attend. Periodic workshops can also be conducted at different levels toimprove the psycho social quality of employees..

Bydoing so the quality of atmosphere in work set up canbe improved.

Nanda

Pondicherry