Culture, Environment and Ethics

That means culture is guide of thinking and behavior of the members of organization. We also can say the culture able to shape the people who are members of that organization. For example, the high school in Japan requires the student to clean up the class after school hour. If many students follow the rules, it will be a culture to everyone. Even you are the new students that come from different culture in the previous school, but when you are enter to your new school and see everyone do the same things, you will be influenced by their culture day by day. It is because you stay under that environment.

Do you think culture can be change? Yes, culture can change but it is quite difficult to change because changing the culture leaves the big impact to everyone. Changing the culture only success if majority support the changing. If not, changing the culture never be reality. For example, recently, Malaysia direction more focus on planet sustainability, which is requiring the citizens realize about how important of this planet for us and future generation. Many campaign and media spread about these objectives. To make these objectives became reality, Malaysia already forbid the plastic and straw consumption. However, there are still have some supermarket, shop and restaurant provide plastic and straw to their customers. Even every supermarket, shop and restaurant charge the customers RM0.20 per plastic bag or straw consumption, but the objective to change the culture from do not use the plastic bags and straws, it is quite difficult to achieve. Here, we can say that changing the culture is not easy work to do. However, culture able to change. Nothing impossible there.

Now, we understand the meaning of culture and environment. So, let’s talk about how culture related to ethics. But before we discuss about this question, we need to understand the ethics. Ethics are the set of moral principles that guide a person’s behavior. These morals are shaped by social norms, cultural practices, and religious influences. Ethics reflect beliefs about what is right, what is wrong, what is just, what is unjust, what is good, and what is bad in terms of human behavior. They serve as a compass to direct how people should behave toward each other, understand and fulfill their obligations to society, and live their lives. As we see, culture and ethics do have the related.

So, the answer to the question do culture related to ethics is yes. However, ethical culture usually refer to organization and environment in firms. The ethical culture in an organization can be thought of as a slice of the overall organizational culture. That means, the ethical culture represents “how we do things around here in relation to ethics and ethical behavior in the organization.” In the other words, the ethical culture represents the organization’s “ethics personality.”

According to Treviño and Nelson, ethical culture should be thought of in terms of a multi-system framework that includes formal and informal systems that must be aligned to support ethical judgment and action. Leadership is essential to driving the ethical culture from a formal and informal perspective. Formally, leaders provide the resources to implement structures and programs that support ethics. More informally, through their own behavior, leaders are role models whose actions speak louder than their words, conveying “how we do things around here.” Other formal systems include selection systems, policies and codes, orientation and training programs, performance management systems, authority structures, and formal decision processes. On the informal side are the organization’s role models and heroes, the norms of daily behavior, organizational rituals that support or do not support ethical conduct, the stories people tell about the organization and their implications for conduct, and the language people use.

In conclusion, the culture and ethics is relating to each other. People may confuse between ethics and culture. However, there are still have differences between culture and ethics because sometimes culture can be unethically. For example, in one organization that many employees misuse of company technology (i.e: online gambling, online shopping or playing online game during working hours). Here, the things that employee practice in the organization is not illegal because nobody said it is wrong. But the things that they did is unethically because they use the company beneficial for themselves and the company may get negative impact because of them. Now, between ethics and culture, which one is more important in our society? The answer of this question depends on everyone perspective.