Unethical practices damaging to reputations in school, business
Unethical practices are becoming an increasing problem United States’ high schools, colleges and businesses resulting in damaged reputations and permanent financial and personal setbacks.
Marianne M. Jennings, professor at Arizona State University and W.P. Carey School of Business, gave tips on how to be ethical to between 60 and 70 people in the Taggart Student Center Auditorium Thursday during Research Week. The presentation was based on her book “Ethics, Choices, Success, [and a very large rabbit),” which she said is a fable that talks about some barriers society faces.
“Honesty is a tough thing,” Jennings, director of The Center of Applied Ethics, said. “I know it’s difficult.” But she said it is the key to success.
She instructed students to avoid justifying, and instead think of the values.
“The issue is that there is a way to solve the problem without compromising your values,” she said.
Sixty-two percent of high school students cheated on an exam last year, Jennings said. But she said the problem wasn’t limited to high school students, but extended to college students where last year 75 percent said they had cheated as well.
Jennings quoted an undergraduate business student saying, “If people can lie and get away with it, good for them.”
Honesty in the workplace is also a problem. According to a KPMG organizational integrity survey conducted in 2000, it reported 76 percent of employees observed a higher level of illegal or unethical conduct at work in the past 12 months.
Describing the downfall of companies such as ENRON, Jennings said it’s easy for people to wonder what the company was thinking.
But she said, “You ease into it. People don’t always embezzle $100,000, they start small.”
She gave an example when someone gets a new car, the rule is water only. However, as time goes on, she said the rule gets changed to brown beverages, and then before the owner of the car knows it, Hawaiian Punch and hot fudge sundaes are being allowed in the car.
Jennings, author of several textbooks, said “As long as humans run companies, there will be mistakes.”
But she said the difference with businesses that have been around for 100 years is when they make a mistake they fix it.
“They have gone through their ups and downs, but have strategically gotten themselves back up without compromising their values,” she said.
Businesses that behave unethically can’t expect to stay in business, Jennings said.
She said people wonder why good people and family people cheat and she said she believes it’s because first, they overestimated their ability to manage the truth, and second, they underestimated the truth coming out.
“Truth has this percolating quality,” Jennings said. “It wants to come out.”
She said everybody is at risk for unethical behavior.
“If you don’t have those values, you will succumb. And the more successful you are, the more at risk you are.”
-sarahwest@cc.usu.edu