Who cares about ethical practices at workplace? A taxonomy of employees’ unethical conduct from top management perspective
International Journal of Organizational Analysis
ISSN: 1934-8835
Article publication date: 29 July 2021
Issue publication date: 31 January 2023
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the study is to explore the various kind of prevailing unethical practices at workplace along with identification of factors triggering such unethical practices. Growing incidences of indulgence of employees in unethical acts in various organisation and negative consequences associated with it for the organisation such as erosion of reputation because of advance digital media coverage, shareholder value and others made compulsive to study the root cause of unethical behaviour at the workplace.
Design/methodology/approach
This study extracts meaning from the experiences of top managers working in nine Indian organisations to understand the challenges faced by individuals at the workplace using the Gioia methodology. A total of 33 top management team (TMT) members were interviewed in detail to capture their experience in regard to various challenges that impose a threat to ethical conduct in the organisation.
Findings
The authors identified four categories of unethical behaviour, namely, pro-self, lack of autonomy, pro-organisation, systemic and negligence. Further, the authors have developed a taxonomy suggesting strategies to control unethical conduct at the workplace. Besides, the current study unravels the triggers behind different categories of unethical conduct, such as bottom-line mentality, rent-seeking behaviour of government officials, fluid ethical study culture and others.
Originality/value
Various types of unethical behaviour have been identified and frameworks to address such unethical practices are suggested in the paper. TMTs views have been captured to understand the root cause of unethical practices and strategies for addressing them have been discussed in the paper.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Authors are deeply thankful to all anonymous reviewers who gave highly valuable feedback that helped them in improving our paper.
Citation
Jha, J.K. and Singh, M. (2023), "Who cares about ethical practices at workplace? A taxonomy of employees’ unethical conduct from top management perspective", International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 317-339. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOA-07-2020-2321
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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