Page 255 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Unit 12: Ethics in Negotiation

12.3.1 Ethics and Individual Behaviour Notes

Individual employees act within an organizational context, including its value system, business
philosophy, ethical codes, and business practices. These may not be congruent with employees’
personal moral beliefs and ethics. Nonetheless, the organization influences its members’
behaviour in critical ways including relations with superiors, subordinates, customers, and
competitors.

12.3.2 Organizational Ethics

Ethical conflicts develop as a result of variations in ethical codes, moral standards, social values,
and laws in different cultures. Complicating these issues is that not all organizations within a
society adhere to the same ethics, morality, or respect for law. Of course, ethical relativism
challenges the idea that these are ethical issues.
One way to examine ethical and social responsibility issues is to distinguish between those that
are primarily internal to organizations and those that affect interactions between organizations.
Frequently, when internal organizational issues raise ethical concerns, they eventually affect
relations between organizations.

12.4 Internal Ethical Issues

Internal ethical issues primarily affect the conduct of organization members. These may include
explicit policies and practices of organizations, laws in a particular place, or cultural values that
prescribe certain behaviours, such as the following:
1. Discrimination: Many societies give preference to members of certain groups. Race,
ethnicity, age, gender, geographic region, and religion are variables used to discriminate.
In some cultures, not being a native of the society is a basis for employment discrimination.
Discrimination can be overt or covert and can determine hiring and promotion. It can also
discourage group members from seeking certain types of employment or expecting career
advancement.

2. Safety: In many countries: both developing and developed – workers’ safety standards
fail to provide adequate protection and create conditions that threaten workers’ health.
Unsafe working conditions, along with child and prison labour, are often part of a strategy
to gain competitive advantage. They can also be a culture based manifestation of indifference
to human suffering.
3. Compensation: Workers’ wages vary considerably around the world. In many countries,
a worker’s annual salary may be what a person with a similar job in another country earns
in a week. From the Western perspective, many developing nations pay incredibly low
wages. However, because Western companies transplant their manufacturing facilities in
low-wage countries, they reinforce this practice. It should also be noted that even in
economically advanced societies, for example, the United States, “sweatshop” conditions
still exist in urban areas with immigrant populations and in rural areas where employment
opportunities are restricted or unions are unable to organise workers.

12.5 Child Labour

Many less-developed countries practise child labour extensively. It raises questions similar to
those of prison labour – which is also found in many developing nations – with the additional
concern of corporate responsibility for establishing appropriate social welfare and educational
institutions in a society.

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