Organizational Citizenship Management Ethics

Organizations must tread a careful balance between not demanding that employees perform tasks that go above and beyond their job description yet still encourage employees to take a vital and interested role in giving back to the organization. They must also tread a delicate balance between striving to micro-manage employees to ensure ethical compliance and showing that they trust employees to follow ethical guidelines using their own discretion. As noted by Singh, Pathardikar, and Bandyopadhyay (2012) most organizations trust employees in a manner that is not “readily monitored or enforced” (p.26). The authors call this model that of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) which is an important component of enhancing organizational performance but which is still at the discretion of the individual employee. Employees are encouraged to become good organizational citizens or “good soldiers” that go above and beyond their personal needs and tasks in a manner that adds to organizational value but does not place undue burdens on employees (Singh, Pathardikar, and Bandyopadhyay, 2012, p.26). Employees must also be sufficiently aware of organizational values and needs so that they are able to act autonomously.
The OCB model runs counter the conventional view of the firm that its sole ethical consideration is to provide shareholders with a profit. The concept of OCB suggests that employee conduct within the construct of the firm and outwardly must uphold some standards and obligations to the community. Furthermore, it also argues that the type of behaviors reinforced in the model is beneficial for the organization’s overall health, particularly in a newly globalized era where serving a diverse range of consumers and employees is so essential. It is also important that employees are able to interact with a wide range of individuals for the organization to function smoothly.

Influencing positive organizational behavior in a values-based fashion has been shown to have a strong, positive influence in encouraging OCB versus transactional carrot and stick methods. In general, factors such as “demographic factors, gender, employment category, and the level of education had significant impact on OCB,” and employees which believed that the organization was strongly supportive of individuals possessing their types of demographic or personal characteristics had higher levels of OCB (Singh, Pathardikar, and Bandyopadhyay, 2012, p.30). This underlines the fact that both for the good of the organization itself as well as for the well-being of employees, organizations must seek to embrace a diverse system of values that honors the commitment of all employees. It is ethical to have an inclusive organization and also improves organizational morale.

Strong organizational values also encourages employees to more consciously follow organizational rules and values when they are acting on behalf of the organization but are not being directly supervised. The concept of organizational citizenship likewise reinforces the idea that not all contingent circumstances under which employees will act can be anticipated. Rather, the organization must prepare employees to follow such guidelines in an engaged and empowered fashion. This imitates an assumption that the ideal is for employees to follow rules in a deontological fashion—in other words, a principle-based ethical decision-making system versus one in which solely the consequences are evaluated.

The ethical dilemma of solely focusing on profits versus fostering ethical behaviors in employees is no longer as stark as it once was; it is more and more accepted that ethical behavior can facilitate organizational cooperation and responsiveness. Using employee intelligence to its maximum capacity is beneficial for the employer as well as the employee. This may be a rare situation in which the ethical solution is also the best solution for the organization. When employees act unethically, particularly if this is seen as a result of organizations pressuring them to do so or because of insufficient oversight, the public relations fallout can be considerable.


References

Singh, V., Pathardikar, A. & Bandyopadhyay, R. (2012). Influences of ethics and values on organizational citizenship behavior: A review. Journal of Management Value & Ethics, 2(3) 25-36.