One of the principal causes of unethical behavior in organizations is overly

aggressive financial or business objectives. Many of these issues relate to decisions

and concerns that managers have to deal with daily. A discussion of a few issues
can help you begin to recognize the ethical problems with which businesspersons
must deal.

1) Misuse of Company Time and Resources

Time theft can be difficult to measure but is estimated to cost companies hundreds
of billions of dollars annually, the misuse of time and resources has been identified
by the Ethics Resource Center as a major form of observed misconduct in
organizations. Using company computer software and Internet services for
personal business is one of the most common ways employees misuse company
resources. Typical examples of using a computer to abuse company time include
sending personal emails, shopping, downloading music, doing personal banking,
surfing the Internet for information about sports or romance, visiting social
networking sites such as Facebook. Employees are expected to use their judgment
to determine when personal activities might be detracting too much from work
responsibilities

2) Abusive or Intimidating Behavior

Abusive or intimidating behavior is another common ethical problem for

employees. Abusive or intimidating behavior refer to many things. For example;
physical threats, false accusations, being annoying, profanity, insults, yelling,
harshness and ignoring someone, and unreasonableness—and their meaning differs
from person to person. Within abusive behavior or intimidation, intent should be a
consideration. Wage theft is another way that employers create an abusive
environment. Employees are increasingly claiming that companies are failing to
pay them overtime for working extra hours. Federal and state regulators are
investigating this uptick in wage theft allegations to see if employers are violating
minimum wage and overtime laws. Bullying is associated with a hostile workplace
where someone (or a group) considered a target is threatened, harassed, belittled,
verbally abused, or overly criticized, bullying can cause psychological damage that
may result in health-endangering consequences to the target. Bullying also occurs
between companies that are in intense competition. twenty-seven states have
introduced the Healthy Workplace Bill to consider ways to combat bullying.