Need 1 to 2 quality post paragraph about this post with 1-2 reference:
1. There are certainly pressures in the workplace that invite unethical behavior. According to Carucci, R. (2016), the following situations create conditions that are ripe for ethical violations, "It is psychologically unsafe to speak up... There is excessive pressure to reach unrealistic performance targets...Conflicting goals provoke a sense of unfairness...A positive example isn't being set." These are just a few examples of situations that can create an environment where people who would normally make ethical choices might be tempted to make decisions that are less than ethical. Environments where employees don't feel safe expressing their concerns, where leadership has modeled unethical behavior, and where injustice and competition are the norm, present challenges and pressure in the workplace.
Employees may feel that they need to cover up behaviors that are unethical, or look the other way when they notice a breach in ethics. They may feel so much pressure to meet performance goals or feel that there is unfairness in how they are treated compared to their coworkers that they are tempted to behave dishonestly or unethically. I would say that in most cases, workplace environments influence people's behavior rather than people being innately unethical. This does not excuse unethical behavior by any means, but I think that people who are generally ethical people can be swayed when workplace pressures present challenging situations. When a person goes to work every day in an environment where leadership directly or indirectly promotes unethical behavior, it is that much easier for them to feel justified in behaving unethically.
That being said, every employee gets to decide every day whether or not they are going to choose the high road. There are many ramifications to behaving unethically, whether "justified" or not, and it can have long term effects that negatively impact employability. Additionally, employees can find themselves in legal trouble as a result of unethical behavior, regardless of the reason why they behaved the way they did. Pressures definitely abound, but the bottom line is that ethical behavior is paramount in business and crucial in maintaining the trust and satisfaction of employees as well as consumers.
Reference:
Carucci, R. (2016). Why ethical people make unethical choices. Harvard Business Review.
2. Regarding ethical behavior, there seem to be a handful of pressures that could exist in the workplace that could lead to unethical behavior. This includes the work environment feeling unsafe for employees to speak up, excessive goal setting that puts too much pressure on employees and/or are conflicting and cause resentment, and positive examples not happening (Carucci, 2006). If people feel like they cannot speak up, unethical events aren't going to get reported and will continue to happen. Also, if management/leadership is writing off the incident if someone does speak up, employees won't speak up next time. Sometimes, too, unrealistic goals can bread unethical behavior to reach that goal (i.e. fibbing prices on things, or like when Whole Foods was charging more for the hot bar weights than the food actually weighed). And certainly, if leadership is not following ethical behaviors why should the employees? Ideally, one would hope people would act ethical for their own individual morals, but sometimes that is not the case.
Personally, there have been three incidents from my husband's work that I would deem unethical. Two were with the owner keeping parts of something that a customer bought (and then denying it was in the box when the customer called and asked about it) and then making an employee change something because it cost too much to do it the way it should have been done. And the third was an employee who opens the store show up two hours later and basically didn't care because, he said, the owner wasn't going to fire him.
Reference:
Carucci, R. (2016, Dec 16). Why Ethical People Make Unethical Choices. Harvard Business Review.