eing employed. They have many questions about the ethics of their employers and how their companies conduct business. This detracts or contributes greatly to job environment morale. For local businesses, in which the majority of America is employed, an important responsibility and challenge is to enhance ethical awareness throughout the organization by providing systems that support employees in doing the right things. Managers who use shared leadership--the concept of leadership as an activity engaged in by different people at different times--to establish the necessary support systems will improve their chances of creating an ethical workplace. Developing an organizational vision, mission, values, ethics guidelines, ethics committee, and ethics dialogue, as well as initiating a training program on ethical decision making, will result in a work environment that motivates employees to exercise ethical judgment with confidence. With that empowerment will come responsibility and accountability (Begin, 1994, pp. 295). With that empowerment will also come higher morale. Historically it is morals that lead to morale.
This increased emphasis on and attention to ethics can improve communications, resolve disagreements, and set high standards for employee/management relations. This, of course, can boost morale. As more local governments force business to adopt such management techniques and processes as continuous quality improvement, the concepts of openness, trust, and allowing employees to take risks gain in ethical importance. Doing the right things right the first time incorporates the universal ethical principles of fairness and honesty with the derivative organizational values of efficiency and effectiveness.
These principles of public service ethics reflect moral obligations that exist independently of and transcend obligations imposed by law and formal codes of conduct. In the process of developing organizational values from et...