The Impact of Employees' Professional Ethics on Organizational Understanding

پژوهش نامه مدیریت تحول

Article 4, Volume 8, Autumn & Winter 2017 - Serial Number 16, February 2017, Pages 92-113   

Document Type: Articles

DOI: 10.22067/pmt.v8i16.54620

Authors

ali safari^* ; Leila Hejaz Hejazi; Soheila Aarabi

University of Isfahan

Abstract

1- INTRODUCTION
BWith the increase of the complexity of organizations and the immoral, illegal and irresponsible deeds in workplaces, pundits have paid more attention to ethical issue and their different effects. Ethics, in brief, is the recognition of right and wrong, and then doing right and withdrawing wrong. According to the studies done, the development of professional ethics is influenced by several factors within the organization such as organizational justice, organizational training, etc., and personal factors such as spirituality, loyalty, etc., and the more these factors strengthen, the adherence and dominance of the professional ethics will also increase. On the other hand, the dominancy of professional ethics renders the mentioned effects and also the behavioral effects such as organizational understanding and convergence within the organization and among employees. The components of the organizational understanding consist of reducing stress, increasing commitment and responsibility, reducing the monitoring costs, and increasing the legitimacy of the organization and its actions. It is essential for the organizations' managers to recognize these factors and eliminate or control them. Justice department, as a crucial part of the judiciary and considering the nature of its mission, needs professional ethics to be observed by its employees and also seeks to have the same comportment with clients by considering organizational understanding. Therefore, due to the significance and exigency of this issue for the judiciary and the justice department and also few studies conducted in this area, this study attempts to determine the influence of professional ethics on organizational understanding among the employees of Isfahan's justice department and seeks to answer this question that whether organizational understanding is influenced by the development of professional ethics or not? And also to what extent the professional ethics in this organization is affected by personal and organizational factors?
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The concept of professional ethics is derived from ethics. Professional ethics is a set of ethical codes derived from the nature of a career or an occupation. Professional ethics can be described as the beliefs of a professional group about what is right and is related to the criteria of the profession. People with professional ethics have some features such as accountability, taking the responsibility of decisions and outcomes, being role model, ethical and sensitive, hardworking, sincere in deeds and paying attention to integrity and reputation.
According to a survey, two sets of organizational factors including organic structure, organizational justice, education, and organizational information system and personal factors such as spirituality, loyalty, and integrity have influence on an organization's professional ethics. Organizational ethics comprises the perception of organizational operations and understanding of their roles and that of the organization. The components of the organizational understanding consist of reducing stress, increasing commitment and responsibility, reducing the monitoring costs and increasing the legitimacy of the organization and its action. The study's hypotheses are as follows:
H1: Organizational factors influence the development of professional ethics.
H2: Personal factors influence the development of professional ethics.
H3: The development of professional ethics has influence on organizational understanding.
3- METHODOLOGY
his study is practical in terms of its objective and is a descriptive survey in terms of its method. The study's population consists of the employees of Isfahan's justice department. The sample size includes 212 people and classified sampling has been used according to the study's population size. The data of the study is collected through a self-made questionnaire which has 45 items. The data were analyzed using structural equation.The content and construct validity of the questionnaire has been verified with using factor analysing. Structural equation modeling and Amos software 20 were used to test the hypotheses.
4- RESULTS and DISCUSSION
The findings of the first hypothesis indicate that organizational factors have influence on the development of professional ethics. It can be understood from this result that the employees' professional ethics would improve and that the organization would benefit from its personnel’s behavior in short and long term. If the level of mechanical organizational structure change to organic structure and become more flexible, and ethical training become a part of an organization's curriculum, all of the three types of organizational justice such as distributive, procedural, and interactional can be strengthen and the communication and information system become more advanced and up to date.
The results of the second hypothesis suggest that personal factors affect the development of professional ethics in such a way that considering ethics in the organization somehow reflects personal factors such as spirituality, loyalty, and integrity at work. The more the spiritual level of the employees develop, the more the loyalty of employees can be considered from different aspects and the more the concept and tools of integrity develop, the more the probability of developing professional ethics by employees increases. In addition, by knowing the right morals and values, the employees will believe in their intellectual and professional development and it is caused by considering professional ethics.
The study's results regarding the third hypothesis show that the development of professional ethics has impact on professional ethics. This result means that the more the organization concerns about professional ethics, the more the organizational understanding increases in different aspects. And as a result, the organization will react to the problems as an entire unit and without any internal and structural contradiction and the organization's entity will be maintained.
5- CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS
It is recommended to take measures in order to make the organizational structure more flexible, more decentralized and academic by holding several meetings with specialists about different aspects of the issue. In addition, the ethical trainings should be on the agenda by studying the proper and effective training methods, spending more time and having a stronger plan. It is suggested that organizations identify and stimulate the driving and developing factors of individuals and organizational spirituality with some predetermined plans. Moreover, organizations can make integrity a collective and cultural behavior by creating moral and material motivations. It is suggested that organizations make new employees familiar with their ethical programs during their socialization period.

Keywords

Individual factors; Organizational Factors; Organizational understanding; Professional ethics

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