Mission, explicit policy, and implicit policy are the elements of ethical climate. Which element do you think plays the greatest role in influencing employee behavior? Why do you feel it is the most important?

Answer 1

Do you think your instructor wants MY ideas or YOUR ideas?

Answer 2

Realistically most employees know and understand the company’s mission, but getting a mission statement taken in by the company’s employees so that it will reflect behavior as a whole is unrealistic. That is why it came in as apart of my list of intangibles, but important. Explicit policy is especially important for new employees so that in black and white expectations are clear from the beginning. Now this can be a positive impact on employee behavior if those in management adhere to the company guidelines as well. Explicit policy can be rendered useless if those in charge have implicit policy that conflicts with either the mission or explicit policy. Ideally all there work in accordance with each other reinforcing positive company behavior however, management ultimately sets the tone as to the behavior of employees on a ground level and if management is unable to comply a crumbling of the system will ensue. Example, Store manager comes to work spending their day joking and watching TV with department mangers until the day is done. The leader of the managers has just set the tone that very little is expected from their work performance as long as they entertained the manager. Now the department managers go visit and joke around with employees not accomplishing anything for the day setting a tone to the staff on the floor level. Once the staff repeats the cycle of those above customer service is effected as well as the organizations reputation as a business. Rendering all efforts to setting up a system useless; accountability would have to be a necessary policy to adopt in order to maintain structure.

Answer 3

Behavior plays a big part in influencing employees. Behavior has the chain effect on employees and if the leader has a poor behavior and he or she does not care about their employees. When this starts then it spreads like fire and is hard to stop. Then employees will soon start to treat others poorly and it could then have a devastating impact on the organization. It can cause good employees to start to adventure to other jobs and making a bad situation even worse. But if the leader attitude is positive and he or she cares about their employees and interacts with them then that will carry over to others and bring in a good atmosphere for others. This can make the employees feel like they can cared about and not just a number to the manager. No matter how many policies and procedures are out there it is impossible to have one for someone’s attitude.