Many organizations spend great amount of resources to implement a set of ethics for employees to follow. However, the concept of what is culturally acceptable behavior, too often, is not aligned with organization’s intended ethics. As result, this paper explores the impact of unethical behavior, and the effects on the workforce. The intent is to reveal the benefits of business research and how this tool can unravel innovative solutions to dealing with unethical behavior. Organizational led unethical behavior can lead to mass fatalities.
An example of this behavior is the recent outbreak of meningitis through spinal injections.According to "The New York Times" (2012), " The rising toll — 7 dead, 57 ill and thousands potentially exposed — has cast a harsh light on the loose regulations that legal experts say allowed a company to sell 17,676 vials of an unsafe drug to pain clinics in 23 states. ” (Scant Oversight of Drug Maker in Fatal Meningitis Outbreak). The outbreak is attributed to the rising costs of this injection made by major manufactures, which led the New England Compounding Center to create a generic version by mixing up their own drug batches for much lesser price and with minimum federal safety oversight.
This proves the New England Compounding Center’s negligence and complete disregard to public safety by knowingly creating a commonly used injection for spinal pain, and making it available for public use without formal testing. Another example from an individual aspect of unethical behavior is the case of Annie Dookhan. Dookhan worked as a crime lab chemist for the state of Massachusetts. She was well-regarded and respected among her peers for her ability to test nearly four times the amount of drug samples compared to a typical chemist.
However, despite her accomplishments, supervisors began to raise suspicions of her achievements and initiated an investigation. As result, it was later discovered that she had purposely tampered with drugs samples by adding more drugs so they would become positive from a negative result. In fact, according to "CBS" (2012), "a supervisor said he ‘never saw Dookhan in front of a microscope. ’ Another chemist said ‘Dookhan would submit a cocaine sample, and it would come back heroin or vice versa’" (Massachusetts lab tech arrested for alleged improper handling of drug tests).
In addition, when questioned, Dookhan allegedly gave false statements about her credentials while under oath. This lab mishandling has evidently led to approximately 1,140 inmates convicted for crimes they did not commit, and the crime lab was consequently shut down as result of this incident. The cases mentioned are prime examples of innocent lives impacted by unethical behavior. Business research would have provided more oversight and transparency in establishing a code of conduct for employees to follow.
Further, it would have also made easy to identify unacceptable behaviors, such as Annie Dookhan’s failure to use the telescope, and in turn, the implementation of corrective actions for those who do not abide by organization’s policies. However, studies show that moral differentiation plays a vital role on unethical behavior. In a study published by the Journal of Business Ethics, it states “ethical decisions making has consistently demonstrated a positive relationship between other’s unethical behavior and observers’ unethical behavior, providing support for the ‘Monkey See, Monkey Do’ perspective.In other words, the differentiating between ethical and unethical behavior relies heavily on the influence of peers and the culture of the organization, which weakens unethical behaviors through strong moral identity, low need for affiliation, and extraversion.
In Massachusetts’ crime lab case, Dookhan’s unethical behavior may have stemmed from her social environment and her need for acceptance. When questioned by investigators, she was quoted saying “I screwed up big time”, “I messed up, I messed up bad, (and) it’s my fault.I don’t want the lab to get in trouble” ("CBS", 2012). The fact that she was praised for being able to processed four times the amount of drug samples in comparison to the typical workload supports that her social work environments encourages individuals to violate their own moral belief. “From an organizational perspective, negative deviance refers to intentional behavior such as lying, cheating, breaching psychological contracts, and social undermining” (“Moral Differentiation: Exploring Boundaries of the "Monkey See, Monkey Do" Perspective,” 2011, para.
11 ).The variables and intangibles of unethical behavior are colossal but vital to the longevity of any organization. Management and executives must spend as much time, effort, and resources to implement code of conduct, policies and procedures to ensure employees are properly trained and aware of the repercussions of violating rules of the organization. Such effort will pay dividends maintaining order and productivity, and most importantly, fatality as result of someone’s negligence.
