Ethical Integrity: How does leadership of the organization manifest a respect or disrespect for truth

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Professional Development

1. How does the respect for truth or the lack of respect for truth impact the organization you are currently working for (or an organization you worked for in the past)?

The respect of truth has got great impact in the workplace. It creates environment of harmony, faith and cooperation. Infact I can say that it is one of the important characteristics of the successful organizations. Moreover lack of truth creates misunderstanding. I agree with freedom of speech, I disagree with disregarding the truth and respect towards others.

Companies such as Enron, WorldCom, ImClone and Tyco have shown all of us how the dishonest, corrupted the business world has become and the men that lead these companies are clear examples of what you do not want to become. Executive position begat power and if it is not handled correctly that power will begat corruptive disaster. (Nahavandi, 2003)

IA New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted in 1985 revealed that 55 percent of the American public believes that the vast majority of corporate executives are dishonest, and 59 percent think that executive white-collar crime occurs on a regular basis.
For example let us take the case of misappropriation-the fraudulent appropriation of funds or property entrusted to your care but actually owned by someone else (Wordreference.Com, 2005)

It is one form of dishonest behaviour. Here Example of Tyco can be taken. The Securities and Exchange Commission began an investigation into Tyco's accounting statements in early 2002. The SEC discovered that Dennis Kozlowski, Tyco's CEO, and Mark Swartz, its CFO, had received over $170 million in loans from Tyco without having these approved by Tyco's compensation committee or disclosing these loans(Szabo,A,2005) The loans did not have any interest rate.

Some of the things that came out during their trial included Kozlowski's Company funded $2 million birthday party and the purchase and the $6000 shower curtain paid for by Tyco. (Business Week, 2005) It appears obvious that Mr. Kozlowski lost touch with his employee workforce. Perhaps if Tyco required its CEO to practice more rational persuasion they could have avoided this fiasco. (Nahavandi, 2003) If the CEO is required to explain the necessity for a $2 million birthday party the spiral of contempt would not occur. However, not everyone is happy with being overly rich; they also want power and prestige without any questioning.

I will give my personal example of the company where I worked with. This is a company into garment manufacturing and exports. It was a large company who employed a lot of persons. Because of the large number of employees, ...