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Factors in how the Wells Fargo Scandal and other Corporate Ethical Issues Begin


It is important to first point out factors that made employees lock up their moral compass temporarily. Once you identify the factors that lead to unethical behavior and talk about it using ethical language it because more straightforward of what actions to take to avoid it and the bad reputation that goes along with it. Fortune.com points out three factors that left bankers at Wells Fargo susceptible to unethical behavior: feeling pressured, treating it as "just business," and separating their lives at work from their lives at home.


1. Feeling Pressured:
Overly aggressive pressure on individual performance by the banks may have caused morality to decrease. Hard-to-reach objects cause morally disengagement by employees, morally disengaged employees are less likely to be loyal to the company and fail to see their actions as part of a bigger picture. To make the performance goals they felt they had no choice but to cheat or they may lose their job. Anxiety and stress at work can impact employees' ethics which causes a fight or flight reaction in the face of pressure.


2. Thinking "It's Just Business":
This type of thinking mentality separates the actions of employees and their personal values. Elimination of personal feeling and ethics from the professional situation can result because of this mental separation from the fraud they are performing. Research shows a business mindset leads to dishonesty and lack of consideration for things such as moral issues. This is why it is so important to make ethical communication and language part of the job and not just in the values statement on the company website.

3. Separating Work and Home Life:
People in the workplace often at some point in their lives experience jobs that require them to take on a different identity. This occasionally may be required to do a job and be a productive and necessary thing to do. In contrast, often this changing of identities results in unethical behavior. When people "segment" themselves into different roles instead of integrating these roles into a unified whole, feeling of inauthenticity can lead to corrupt behavior. The Wells Fargo bankers justified their poor actions at work by acting ethically outside of work.
One term that was mention by various articles I read was the idea of "moral muteness." This concept is people's resistance to "blow the whistle" or communicate their moral concerns. Unfortunately, the typical worker unless they are strong in their ethical views and in a post-conventional stage of morality will not speak up about unethical behaviors at work when they are as widespread as the Wells Fargo business practices.

Business leaders and Ethics Committee board members need to understand what ethical issues employees are likely to face and then educate so that employees know how to react ethically. By understanding the factors leaders can prevent unethical behavior before it occurs.


Sources:
http://fortune.com/2016/09/15/wells-fargo-scandal/
http://turnyourinterestintoprofit.com/6-easy-steps-to-separating-your-personal-life-from-your-business
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-09/wells-fargo-opened-a-couple-million-fake-accounts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlwc5VrwCqU



Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 24, 2017 at 11:37 AM

    It can be a very slippery slope when deciding between ethics and profit. Sometimes the subconscious mind will rationalize such an action to make sense of a bad decision. This is common and even hard to see from the inside.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownApril 24, 2017 at 5:39 PM

      I agree. I think thats why is is so important to hold training and ethics training that is related to issues employees will face everyday. I think one main issue is when employees face a situation where they do not know how they are to act. When employees are prepared to face issues they are more likely to make the right choice and be confident in that decision.

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