Ethics and
Integrity: What Australian Organizations Seek and Offer in Recruitment
Advertisements
Eva Tsahuridu
Faculty of Business
& Public Management
Edith Cowan University
and
Chris Perryer
Graduate School of
Management
University of Western Australia
Despite
widespread agreement surrounding the importance of ethical standards, little
agreement exists as to how organizations should proceed. While some authors
suggest that organizations are responsible for their ethical environment,
others see individual ethical standards as more critical. General agreement does exist on the need for
organizations to possess and communicate positive messages about their ethical
precepts. Organizations seen in a
positive ethical light will acquire enhanced reputations, and are more likely
to attract ethical employees. This
exploratory study examined Australian job vacancy advertisements, assessing
organizational communication to potential employees in terms of ethics and
related concepts. The study found that
most organizations make little effort to communicate ethical requirements to
potential employees or to address the importance of ethics in them. Implications for employers and for further
research are discussed.
The adoption of exemplary ethical
standards in organizations is increasing in importance. There is little need to justify this
statement, as there is general empirical and normative agreement. What is and ought to be done is generally
accepted. The same agreement however is
not found in how this improvement in the ethics of organizations can be
accomplished. Some argue more ethical
organizations will result if ethical people are recruited in organizations,
whilst others argue that organizations will be more ethical if they increase
their attention to ethics in both their formal and informal systems. These approaches indirectly address the
issue of moral responsibility in organizations and organizational moral
personhood. Traditionally, individuals
in organizations have been held responsible and accountable for ethical
misbehavior. More recently however,
culpability for moral misbehavior is placed on business organizations as well.
The two viewpoints are based on the
mainly sociological distinction of whether the person makes the place or the
place the person. If the person makes
the organization then the organization will reflect personal values and
beliefs. In this case organizations
ought to recruit ethical people in order to be ethical and behave
ethically. If however the place makes
the person, organizations need to have an ethical culture and climate that will
affect persons acting in and for them.
The current study addresses
organizational external recruitment activities and the issue of ethical
language in them. Gatewood, Gowan and Lautenschlager (1993) found that the
amount of information presented in the recruitment advertisement of an
organization was strongly related to the recruitment image constructed by
applicants. The more information made
available in recruitment advertisements the more likely the intention to pursue
employment. Recruitment activities are
important because if we accept the viewpoint that the people make the place,
then we must ensure that the people we attract to the organization have the
values and capabilities that will be congruent with those of the
organization. If however we accept the
effect of the context on the individual, we have to communicate the values and
norms that will need to be adopted by successful employees.
In the current study, we are
addressing the issue of how Australian organizations communicate ethics and
integrity in their recruitment advertisements.
This is an exploratory research that seeks to establish patterns of
ethics and integrity references, analyse their occurrence and address the
implications for ethics and integrity in organizations.
Business organizations are increasing
their efforts to promote and guarantee ethical behavior. In America, 60 per cent of organizations
maintain a code of ethics (McDonald & Nijhof, 1999). The number of codes developed by Australian
companies is increasing primarily in response to external pressure. Since 1995, Australian Stock Exchange
Listing Rule 4.10.3 requires listed companies to report on their corporate
governance practices in their annual report (Hicks, 1999). Most listed organizations responded to this
demand with the creation of a code of ethics.
The approach adopted by many
organizations supports the notion that they adopt the view that the place makes
the person, because it primarily emphasises codes of conduct and compliance
programs. It also communicates the
belief that individuals are opportunistic and they will further their selfish
interests over those of the organization (Falkenberg & Herremans,
1995). This is confirmed by the
emphasis of codes of conduct on protecting the organization from its own
employees (Schwartz, 2000). The
effectiveness of these programs is questionable (Falkenberg & Herremans,
1995; McKendall, DeMarr, & Jones-Rikkers, 2002; Soutar, McNeil, &
Molster, 1994). It has also been argued that they will remain ineffective
unless supported by an ethical informal organizational system (Falkenberg &
Herremans, 1995), because people conform with unwritten codes of behavior much
more than with formal control systems (O’Reilly, 1989).
Bell’s (1998) dichotomy of the two
extreme views of social control is applicable to organizations, when they are
examined as social systems. One view
perceives a social system as the force that shapes the individual. It provides to the individual the illusion
of autonomy, whilst in reality it determines the individual’s beliefs,
attitudes, and behaviors. The other view, the minority according to Bell,
perceives society as the product of individual and collective choices and
decisions. The social order is
constructed by the actions and interactions of purposive individuals, and these
actions and interactions make social change possible. This view accepts the existence of unintended or unanticipated
consequences that require correction.
Some philosophers go beyond the
acceptance of the organization as a social system and attribute moral agency
and personhood to it (French, 1979, 1996; Garrett, 1989; Weaver, 1998). Generally however organizations are accepted
as moral worlds (Goodpaster, 1989; Nesteruk, 1991) even if not as moral
persons. Goodpaster treats organizations as moral worlds and compares them to
Aristotle’s city-states. He argues that
like Aristotle, who claimed that one cannot discuss the nature of a morally
good person without discussing the social conditions that develop and sustain
such persons, we cannot discuss good persons in organizations if we do not
address organizations. Good organizations,
Goodpaster suggests, should provide the social conditions that develop and
sustain morally good people, for the sake of themselves and their
stakeholders. To achieve this, he
prescribes that organizations should ensure that neither the formulation nor
the implementation of policy undermines the ethical beliefs of their employees,
and they must ensure the communication of their ethical standards. Both of these responsibilities require the
organization to respect the dignity and moral autonomy of each employee
(Goodpaster, 1989, p 95).
Beach (1990) outlines that the
organizational influence is exercised by dividing tasks among its members,
establishing standard practices, transmitting objectives, providing
communication channels and training and indoctrinating its members with
knowledge, skill and loyalties. These
influences “allow them to make the decisions the organization wants made in the
way the organization wants them made” (p 11).
As such the organization provides both the ends and the means of
decisions and behavior. The
organization also affects the locus of choice on decision-making (Vaughan,
1998). The organization as a social
context shapes what a person perceives as rational at any given moment. The specialization and division of labor that
occurs in organizations may make people in organizations unable to see the
illegality and immorality of certain actions.
Each action is a part of a chain of actions, and even though each
individual act may be legitimate and moral, all the actions linked together may
constitute an illegal or immoral activity, which each individual participant
may be ignorant of.
As a result of the organizational
influence, employees in organizations do not function as highly individualistic
ethical decision-makers (Fraedrich, Thorne, & Ferrell, 1994, p. 835). Instead they act as occupants of roles, and
as subjects of rules, rather than persons (Nesteruk, 1991). As a result, “Rarely do the character flaws
of a lone actor fully explain corporate misconduct. More typically, unethical business practice involves the tacit,
if not explicit, cooperation of others, and reflects the values, attitudes,
beliefs, language, and behavioral patterns that define an organization’s
operating culture” (Sharp Paine, 1994, p. 106). Individuals acting together can produce morally objectionable
events and states of affairs that no individual acting alone could produce
(McMahon, 1995). The division of
responsibility and the anonymity that togetherness provides, enables regression
of the standards individuals may hold as persons.
According to this view, organizations
have to possess ethical values and communicate these values to their members in
order to behave ethically. They must
develop an ethical climate and have formal systems that are congruent with the
informal elements of the organization.
The other extreme view sees the
organization as the outcome of the people that populate it and their
interaction. Schneider’s (1987)
Attraction – Selection – Attrition (ASA) process exemplifies this view. This process perceives the organizations’
structure, processes and technology as caused by ASA and not as its
determinants. Organizations, according
to Schneider, when viewed as situations containing patterned behavior and as
environments characterized by the coordinated activities of interdependent
parts, including interdependent people, are environments which are a function
of persons behaving in them. People are
thus responsible for their choices in terms of employers and organizations they
accept, and are not randomly assigned to organizations, because it is through
their voluntary action that they become members of their chosen
organization. This is supported by
the view which argues that the acceptance of a contract, such as the employment
contract, in the absence of force or fraud obliges the parties to the contract
to morally comply or quit accordingly (Hartman, 1998). In this view, it is not
the organization that affects the individual; the individual chooses to be part
of the organization.
Bell and Staw (1989) also voice
their antithesis to the organizational literature that is based on
socialization, and views individuals as passive and malleable. Socialization is “the process by which an
individual comes to understand the values, abilities, expected behaviors, and
social knowledge that are essential for assuming an organizational role and for
participating as an organization member” (Louis, 1980 cited in Chatman, 1991,
p. 462). Frequently individuals are
portrayed as “lumps of clay” (Bell and Staw, 1989, p. 232) that join
organizations, ready to be shaped by coworkers, superiors and mentors. Bell and Staw propose that the influence the
organization has on the individual or the individual’s on the organization,
depends on the situational strength.
They argue that some organizations are weak or ambiguous and enable
individual dispositions to be expressed.
Bell and Staw concede that conformity exists in organizations but its
degree and frequency have been inflated in the literature. They do not think that personality will
dominate the work situation, but they do think that when measured properly,
individualization and not homogenization can be found in work situations. They also argue that socialization and its
related forces, such as role taking, and social influence are not capable of
eliminating the idiosyncrasies that individuals bring into the
organization. Bell and Staw propose
that if a person cannot control and predict behavior and outcomes, the person
will withdraw from the organization or enter a state of learned helplessness.
Organizations are intensifying their
efforts to improve their ethics (Sharp Paine, 1996).
Kaptein (1999) suggests that to manage
organizational integrity it is necessary to provide clear expectations to
employees that they are required to make responsible choices about integrity
issues, and to provide consistent and unambiguous expectations of behavior. It is also necessary to enable people to
make moral judgements in organizations and not merely to offer instructions
that aim to guide behavior (Kjonstad & Willmott, 1995), as most
organizations do.
Business organizations’ climate and
culture contain values and goals. These values and goals develop the reputation
of the organization (Dickson, Smith, Grojean, & Ehrhart, 2001). This reputation then, argue Dickson et al,
serves as a catalyst for Schneider’s (1987) Attraction – Selection – Attrition
(ASA) process. The reputation of the
organization affects the intention to pursue employment with the given
organization. Kaptein (1998) uses the term reputation as synonymous with moral
trustworthiness and explains it as the “stakeholders’ perception of the
company’s conscience” (p. 11), including correctness, sincerity, integrity,
meticulousness and fairness.
Corporate Social
Performance (CSP) is an evaluation of the degree to which organizations meet
their social responsibilities (Albinger Schmidt & Freeman, 2000). In the study conducted by Albinger Schmidt
and Freeman it was found that the CSP is highly correlated to how attractive
potential candidates find employers for people with increased job choice. These and the findings reported earlier indicate
that communicating values and ethics in recruitment advertisements, together
with an ethical organizational reputation, is likely to increase the
attractiveness of the employer to potential job seekers, thus providing a
competitive advantage to the organization in terms of recruitment. Attracting people with congruent values also
eliminates the possibility of “bad apples” (Trevino & Youngblood, 1990)
entering the organization.
Greening and Turban
(2000) found that applicants would be attracted to firms with positive
Corporate Social Performance (CSP) reputations. They will pursue jobs with such firms, will attempt to interview
with such firms, and will have a higher probability of accepting a job offer
from these firms. These findings,
suggest the authors, have implications for organizational competitive
advantage.
Organizational integrity goes beyond
compliance. Integrity is founded on
self-governance based on principles and is driven by ethics (Sharp Paine,
1994). Organizational commitment to
integrity has been found to lead to competitiveness, positive work morale and
sustainable relationships with key stakeholders by Sharp Paine.
Empirically, it has been found that 82
per cent of professionals in the United Kingdom would not work for an
organization, which had values they did not share (Anonymous, 2001). The same study by the Industrial Society
reports that more than half of the respondents reported that they chose the
company they work for because they believe in what it does and what it stands
for. This study also found that the
responsible behavior of the potential employer is an important criterion for
almost everyone.
The literature
provides compelling support for the notion that decision makers should
carefully consider outsider perceptions of the ethical precepts in their
organizations. Organizational ethical
behavior and reputation improves the quantity and quality of potential
organizational members. Little research
attention, however, has been paid to practical aspects of this issue, despite
the potential for significant improvements in organizational effectiveness.
This exploratory research seeks to assess the organizational communication to
potential employees in terms of its ethics and related concepts.
Data were obtained from a large
on-line recruitment organization that targeted employment vacancies in
Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji. Initially, all vacancies that had been posted over a fourteen day
period were examined. Part-time,
short-term contract, and temporary vacancies were ignored, as it was considered
that organizations might be more concerned about applicants’ skills than other
considerations for these vacancies.
Vacancies in countries outside Australia were also ignored, leaving a
total of 2885 job advertisements. Since
the purpose of the study was to identify only those advertisements that
specified issues relating to ethics and integrity, a keyword search on the
words “ethical” or “ethics” or “integrity” was conducted. This search identified 108 advertisements
that met the criteria. Each of these
advertisements was examined to ensure that they were using the key words to
convey ethical expectations of applicants or some similar sentiment. Sixteen vacancies involved integrity of
data, integrity of process, or integrity of physical assets. These cases were not considered further,
leaving 92 cases remaining.
Each of
these cases was then examined in detail to see if the advertisement specified a
requirement for ethical behavior or if they simply described the organization
or its environment as ethical. Each
case was also examined to see if a “results orientation” was required, or if
experience, skills, or qualifications were considered important. This was done to discover whether or not
there was any emphasis on, or balance between, ethical behavior and achievement
of results. Finally, cases were
classified into nine broad categories to detect any variance based on industry
or profession.
Contains a summary of the findings. Overall, only 92 cases (3.2% of total
advertisement) made any mention of ethics or integrity.
|
|
Ethical organization/
environment |
Ethical person
required |
Results orientation
required |
Skills &
experience required |
Total Adverts |
|
Medical |
56 |
|
|
56 |
214 |
|
Sales & Marketing |
9 |
4 |
4 |
11 |
446 |
|
Finance & Banking |
4 |
4 |
|
8 |
338 |
|
Management & Administration |
3 |
4 |
1 |
7 |
345 |
|
Accounting & Auditing |
|
3 |
|
3 |
433 |
|
Information Technology |
|
3 |
1 |
3 |
409 |
|
Government |
|
1 |
1 |
1 |
33 |
|
Engineering |
|
1 |
|
1 |
225 |
|
Other |
|
|
|
|
442 |
|
Total |
72 |
20 |
7 |
90 |
2885 |
Table 1 – Summary of Findings
In 72 cases (2.5% of total advertisements) the word ethical
was used to describe the culture of the organization or the environment in
which it operates. The majority of
these cases were in the medical category, with 56 relating to vacancies in the
hospital sector in one Australian state.
All of these cases contained a standard sentence in small print at the
end of the advertisement referring to the ethical environment in which the
organization operated. These 56 cases
represented 26.2% of all advertisements in the medical category. While all of these positions required
relevant skills, experience or qualifications, ethical behavior was not
specifically required of the applicant in a single case, nor was there any
requirement for a results orientation.
Other job categories that described the organization’s culture or
environment as ethical included sales and marketing (9 cases or 2.0%), finance
and banking (4 cases or 1.2%), and management and administration (3 cases or
0.9%).
In only
twenty cases (0.7% of total advertisements), the advertisement specifically
required ethical behavior or integrity from applicants. The requirement for ethical behavior was not
confined to any particular profession, and was a requirement in eight of the nine
job categories.
Seven
of the 92 cases examined in detail (7.6%) required a “results orientation” from
the applicant. This requirement was
most common in sales and marketing vacancies.
In 90 of the 92 advertisements, qualifications, knowledge, or experience
were required.
Other
aspects of the content of advertisements varied considerably. For example, some vacancies in regional
areas explained in detail the attractions of the locality. Others were very specific about the
organizational structure and reporting arrangements. Some provided a lot of information about the objectives of the
organization. Many stressed the need
for the successful applicant to be capable of building and sustaining
relationships. Most of the
advertisements examined used emotive language, with expressions such as
“exciting opportunity”, “dynamic team”, “highly motivated professional with
innovation, flare and imagination” being very common. Public sector
advertisements invariably provided details about salary, whereas private sector
advertisements provided an indicative salary and benefits package, or did not
mention remuneration at all.
The findings of this research indicate
that most Australian organizations do not address the issue of ethics and integrity
in their recruitment advertisements.
This finding can be explained by addressing the two positions that were
outlined earlier. Organizations may
assume that people possess high ethical standards and these standards are not
affected by the context, thus there is no reason to address the ethicality of
potential recruits. The number of
organizations that have codes of ethics and conduct and ethics programs however
makes this possibility unlikely.
The other possibility is that ethics
and ethical reputation are not a major concern for Australian
organizations. This appears to be a
more likely position, based on the findings of this research. Australian organizations in their
recruitment communications appear concerned with finding the right skills and
experiences to fill positions. This
supports the observation made by Werhane (1999) that employees are perceived as
economic phenomena and as such are treated and measured in quantitative terms
rather than in individualized terms.
Organizations according to this dominant perspective, Werhane claims, do
not hire, promote, transfer, layoff, and fire people so much as job skills,
productivity, fit with the organization, retrainability and performance.
The majority of the employees that
will be selected from the recruitment advertisements examined in this instance
may be told something about ethics and the code upon entering the employing
organizations. What is likely to be
promoted in employees however may be cynicism and lack of trust. Trust is difficult to establish but it
provides referent power to people who are trusted (Ciulla, 2002). Ciulla uses Hollander’s (1958) concept of
idiosyncratic credits as an outcome of trusted leadership. Idiosyncratic credits enable leaders to
deviate form the norm because they are trusted by people. Such credits give
leaders the latitude to make changes that are accepted and found acceptable by
the followers. However, trust is only
given to individuals who are perceived to be morally good persons and morally
good leaders. Being trustworthy is not
something that can be faked. It has to
be an authentic element of the organization and its leaders’ behavior for it to
be perceived as such and for trust to be given to it and them.
The unauthentic leads to cynicism and
lack of trust. Organizations need to
ensure that they communicate ethics, both in terms of expectations of ethical
behavior as well as their own ethical stature to potential employees. This is going to improve their recruitment
effectiveness. Beyond this instrumental
outcome, an ethical organization thinks and talks and acts ethics. It has an ethical reputation and is trusted
by current and potential employees.
This trust is built on an authentic ethical reputation.
The employment advertisement and the
reputation of the organization affects the image created in the minds of
potential candidates, and subsequently their decision to apply for and accept
employment. By excluding ethics,
organizations may disadvantage themselves and limit their competitive advantage
by not communicating effectively, thus limiting the pool of appropriate
candidates and diluting the moral language that creates criteria enabling the
ethics or the organization to develop.
The absence of ethics cues from job advertisements and the emphasis on
instrumentality communicates an egoistic orientation, which by definition
excludes ethics. In addition, the
emphasis on egoistic ends for the applicant as well further reinforces the
instrumental goals of the organization.
This
study has examined empirically some aspects of ethical organizational behavior
not previously reported in the literature.
Despite widespread agreement surrounding the importance of ethical
standards, the study found that most organizations make little effort to
communicate ethical requirements to potential employees. In addition there is very limited
communication in regard to the ethical climate and values of the employing
organization. These findings indicate
that the great majority of organizations seeking new members are disadvantaging
themselves by not addressing an issue potential employees find
significant. This absence also affects
the authenticity of organizations’ ethics.
Some
limitations of the study should be noted.
Firstly, although the initial sample was quite large, (N=2885) all data
were collected from one source over a fourteen day period. Further research is needed to determine
whether or not the findings of this study are consistent with job
advertisements over a longer period of time, in other media, and indeed in
other countries. Secondly, no input was
sought from the recruitment professionals who drafted the vacancy
advertisements. It may be that
additional insights into the reasoning of employers can be obtained from such
input. This may lead to the development
of techniques and strategies that could be used by organizations to communicate
their ethical messages to potential employees, and to other stakeholders in the
community.
It may
also be useful to examine recruitment advertisements prior to the recent
organizational misbehavior epidemic and the differences between industries and
sectors. It is also expected that the
increased regulatory activity that seeks to impose ethical behavior on
organizations is likely to increase the communication about ethics in
recruitment efforts, like the Equal Employment Opportunity regulations have
done in the past. This study provides a
foundation for further inquiry into organizational ethics in recruitment,
beyond the issue of fairness that has to date been addressed. It enables further development of the goal
based empirical theory (Golembiewski, 1965) of business ethics by clarifying
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Biographical
Sketches
Eva Tsahuridu is completing a PhD in
Management at Edith Cowan University in Australia, where she explores moral
autonomy in organizational
decisions. She teaches business ethics
and management at Edith Cowan University.
Her research interests include ethics in business, organizational
behavior and gender issues. She can be
reached at:
13 F Earls Court Square
Earls Court,
London, SW5 9BY
United Kingdom
Chris Perryer is a lecturer in organizational
theory and organizational behavior, and a DBA candidate, at the Graduate School
of Management, the University of Western Australia. His major research interests include training and development,
cross-cultural and gender issues, ethics, and public administration. He can be reached at:
Graduate School of Management
University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley, Western Australia 6009