Ethical dilemmas at work: a behavioral study

Abstract

Today's corporate India faces new challenges every day in the face of burgeoning competition. Would Ethics and a strong allegiance to the same be a key to survival foursome of the well-known software firms, which swear by integrity? Can we assume that professionals with a high sense of individual ethicality display the same sense of ethical behavioural patterns at work? If not, do software professionals make decisions which may lead to them compromising on their individual ethical choices, and perform actions against their choice. Finally, the essential question - does ethicality have any significance in today's world? Public sentiment seems to suggest that very few people regard the business ethics of executives highly. However, a survey of 130 IT professionals in Bangalore seems to suggest yes - there is some hope left after all. This study has brought out interesting results to offer, which will be presented in future sections. Intuitively people could be categorized into three groups based on their behaviors or reactions to work ethics situations: a) The Amoral category with people in this group too new to the industry to be held legally responsible for actions committed) The Immoral category - people in this group base their actions on their self-aspirations and for whom it seems that it does not matter whether their actions affect their colleagues or the company's reputation in the long run. c) The Moral category - people in this group seem to own and take full responsibility for their actions as they confront such situations. However, some amount of talking to professionals performing varied roles, and results from the survey bring a new dimension to this category. Based on the remarks given on responses, there seems to be an internal division within the Moral category wherein people could behave in a manner seen as unethical in society based on the following premises. People falling under this category would behave in this fashion as long as a) Their actions did not affect their colleagues b) They think that the ultimate responsibility of their actions lies with their superiors or the organizations they worked for. Based on these premises, the study attempted to examine ethical behaviors across various roles or between the sexes and verify if 'ethicality' changed as we moved from lower to higher experience groups or between the male and female populations. The survey results from the study do not show a significant change in behaviors across populations in the different groups. Although some percentage of the sample set seemed to display extreme behaviors, a majority of the populations' responses were practical. However, female population showed a more practical side to ethical behaviors compared to the male population. In addition, women showed lesser deviation in ethical behaviors as compared to the male population. The further sections show how the idea for the study was conceived, what went as part of the preparation for the survey, the data collection methodology, data analysis with observations, further scope for improvements in this study and my final conclusions.