Business ethics principles and applications

Human Resources

Business Ethics

The article What can psychology tell us about business ethics (Messick, 2009), was very interesting. It was fascinating to read about people make decisions based upon ideas and notions that they are not even aware that they have. It is easy to see how people's views can be shaped by their environment or by the situation in which they are in, but it is not as easy to see how things that people aren't even aware of can influence the decisions that they make. When looking at this notion in regards to organizational theories it is interesting to see how a number of theories support this idea in the business world.

According to the view of cognitive theorist's the capacity of employees to comprehend or be cognizant of what is happening both inside of an organization in particular and in the world as a whole, can be utilized to create theories having to do with organizational behaviors. These theories include the Social Cognitive Theory developed by Albert Bandura in the early 1960's, and the Social Learning Theory that was developed in the early 1940's by J. Dollard and N.E. Miller. These social theorists hypothesize that people gain knowledge by looking at what is done by others. Additionally, that thought processes are essential to an employer's ability to understanding the different personalities of their employees. It is the suggestion of the Social Cognitive Theory, that one can get a clear comprehension of organizational behaviour via your look at the leaders, other employees, as well as their tasks within the organization (Organizational Behavior Theories, n.d.). According to this theory if people gain knowledge by watching others it goes to show how people may see things at one point in their lives that influence their decisions later on in their life, on both a conscious and sub-conscious level.

These theories have their attention on the knowledge, cultural principles, attitude and ideas that are common within an organization. They also address the effect the foregoing has on how they relate. "In the book Organizational Culture and Leadership, published in 1992, the Cultural theorist Edgar Schein claims that organizational behaviors will be what results from those values that employees have gotten used to applying at the place of business, as well as their usual approach to work" (Organizational Behavior Theories, n.d.). This shows how things that people have been exposed to outside of the organization environment can also influence the decisions that they make while at work.

These theories are typically used to clarify how people react in situations wherein they are expected to utilize their intelligence within their companies. "Spearman's General Intelligence Theory; otherwise called the Structural Model, speaks to the fact that intelligence is derived from a single factor; that of how one relates to co-workers with respect to circumstances in which they are required to make a decision between two or more options alternatives that are competing against each other" (Organizational Behavior Theories, n.d.). The theorists suggests that how the workers will reason and react to these conditions will be determined in relation to the duration of time they have been working in the company. If a person is new to a company then they will not have had the exposure level that a veteran employee has and thus will have less environmental influence on their decision-making.