Deviant workplace behavior and organizational ethics in "Hot Seat"

Responsibility Project

For the completion of the task pertaining to the organizational ethics, the responsibility project website is nominated and short film selected is "Hot Seat." The following paper caters to the specification of the movie in full details.

The Responsibility Project

The Situation Highlighted in the Short Film

The short film presents the scenario of a workplace. It is an animated movie that sheds light on the deviant workplace behaviors. With the lack of resources and inter-employee bonding the movie presents a situation where after losing the resource (chair) the employees start an exchange sequence to suffice their needs but leaving the other employee troubled. For a long period of time the similar exchange program was executed and at last a responsible employee finally takes charge and sort out the problem. The last employee fixes the chair for himself and sets back to work. In the five minutes episode presented in the video many organizational related topics were highlighted (Seat, 2008).

Reason of the Issue Being Important

Taken together the findings reveal that there are various factors that contribute to employee behavior in the workplace and individual and organizational characteristics should both be considered when studying employee behavior. The first thing that organizations should take into consideration is that the relationship between the employee and the organization is contractual and therefore organizations and employees should be aware that their actions have legal implications. After understanding the contractual theory one can consider the typology of deviant workplace behavior which provides a vivid description of how both interpersonal and organizational factors contribute to employee behaviors at the workplace. By understanding the signs of minor deviances, organizations can prevent such deviances from converting into major ones. At the same time conflict of interest is also an emerging topic that helps in explaining the deviant workplace behaviors and it attributes employee behavior to both organizational and individual factors, the actual and potential conflict of interest that result in deviant workplace behavior.

Role of External Social Pressures on Organizational Ethics

An employee has a conflict of interest when he or she has an interest that is not according to the interests of the organization and this often results in various minor crimes such as bribery and extortion. After understanding the conflict of interest exists, organizations can seek to remove this interest to prevent counterproductive behavior. Justice also plays an important role and many workplace behaviors are a result of organizational characteristic whereas en employee's personality also influences workplace behavior. The father of Justice John Rawls advocates principle of equal opportunity which organizations can use to justify employee rights and prevent discrimination at the workplace. Discrimination in the recent years is seen as unintentional and organizational therefore organizations can seek to remove stereotypes to ensure ethical behavior. Stereotypes often result in unfair treatment of employees especially woman and minorities. Sexual harassment is another workplace attitude that is a result of organizational characteristic and deserves attention. Both discrimination and sexual harassment are a result of organizational characteristics that need to be dealt through affirmative action programs. The limitations of this program should be understood to ensure ethical behavior, as many experts see this program as unfair. Lastly one can also consider that individual characteristics can lead to deviant or positive workplace behavior and this includes personality tests. These tests should be ensured for criterion and content validity.

Relevance of the Issue in Organizational Decisions

Motivation was inherently thought of as an internally induced phenomenon but in the recent years various factors such as organizational culture, compensation and organizational environment have contributed to employee motivation. Employees who are content with their compensation package and satisfied with the workplace environment are usually the most productive. This brings us to an important point, that of organizational equity. Often employees do not base their work attitudes on the compensation packages and workplace environment in isolation; it is usually a result of various interlinked factors dominated by perceived equity.

Relationship between Legal and Ethical Issues in the Film

According to the typology of deviant workplace behavior, deviant behavior is a result of organizational and interpersonal factors and it can range from minor offences such as gossiping about co-workers to embezzlement. There are four kinds of deviances mentioned by the authors' namely political, personal, production and property deviance. Political and personal deviances are a result of interpersonal factors where political deviance can result in minor offences such as favoritism, gossiping about co-workers and personal serious offences such sexual harassment and verbal abuse. Production and property deviances result from organizational factors where production deviance can be in the form of wasting resources and property deviance can be in the form of embezzlement. Looking at this typology one realizes that offences come in many forms and they can either be a result of interpersonal characteristics or organizational characteristics. In order to encourage ethical behavior the minor signs of organizational and interpersonal deviances should be identified to ensure they do not covert into serious deviances.

It has been similarly noted that communication skills encompasses all the aspects of oral, verbal as well as non-verbal communication. The stance of successful communication is achieved when the source coded message is duly understood and well interpreted by the receiver. A clear understanding of the communicated message remains the critical point of examination.