The Effect of Organization's Past Responses to Employees' Unethical Behaviors

Employees learn about organizational culture and act in accordance with the culture. Based on the information they gather, employees decide as to how to resolve ethical dilemma situations. In this paper, the effect of organization's past response to ethical issues and problems on employees' decision to behave ethically or unethically is examined. It is also hypothesized that the presence of an ethics consultant will play a role in the relationship. The results found that employees' satisfaction with organization's past response and presence of an ethics consultant negatively influenced employees' tendency to behave unethically. The hypotheses were supported. Implications are discussed in the conclusions.