PSYC 644 Week 1 DB Forum 1 Example

Discussion Board Forum 1: Thread and Two Replies

PSYC 644 Organizational Ethics, Discussion Board Forum 1 (thread and two replies)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the employee described and the classmates' posts are composites standing in for the course's own forum; Scripture, the textbook and the journal articles are real and described from their published sources; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for PSYC 644.

Thread

Dana sells surgical equipment for a medical device company and had a strong year until a large hospital order slipped from late March into early April. Without it she would miss her quarterly target and a bonus her family was counting on. She changed the shipping date in the system to March 31, reasoning that the hospital would receive the equipment either way and no one would be harmed. Her manager, who also needed the numbers, did not ask questions. Two quarters later, an internal audit found the same pattern in three other territories, and the company had to restate its revenue.

It is tempting to call Dana a bad apple and move on. Johnson (2019) presents ethics instead as a set of competencies, including the ability to recognize ethical issues, reason about them and follow through, that can be strengthened or weakened by the settings people work in. That view invites a broader question: what made this choice easy? Dana is not a stranger to ethics. She teaches a Sunday school class and would never take cash from a customer. Something about this situation let her see a falsified date as harmless paperwork rather than a lie.

Kish-Gephart et al. (2010) addressed that question in a meta-analysis that sorted the sources of unethical decisions into three categories: bad apples, meaning characteristics of individuals; bad cases, meaning features of the ethical issue; and bad barrels, meaning aspects of the organizational environment. All three mattered. Individuals with lower levels of moral reasoning, a stronger Machiavellian orientation and a belief that outcomes are controlled by outside forces made more unethical choices. Issues perceived as less intense, where harm seemed small or distant, invited more unethical behavior. Organizational climates focused on self-interest predicted more unethical choices, while climates emphasizing concern for others or adherence to principles, along with an ethical culture that enforced its codes, predicted fewer.

Dana's case touches every category. Her own rationalization is an individual factor. The issue felt low in intensity, a few days' difference on paper with no visible victim, even though misdated revenue misleads investors and auditors. Her environment rewarded quarterly numbers above all, with bonuses tied entirely to booked revenue, and her manager's silence signaled that bending the rules was acceptable. Firing Dana alone would leave the barrel untouched for the next representative facing the same pressure. The audit finding in three other territories suggests the barrel was the larger problem: when several people independently make the same choice, the cause usually lies in what the organization rewards, tolerates and fails to ask about.

Micah 6:8 names three things the Lord asks of his people: justice in action, a heart that loves mercy and a humble walk with God (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). Organizations cannot make employees righteous, but they can build environments that make justice easier than shortcuts. That means hiring for character, training people to see the hidden victims of seemingly small issues and rewarding managers for how results are achieved, not only for the results. It also means giving people like Dana a safe way to say that a target cannot be met honestly.

If you led Dana's sales region, which of the three sources would you address first, and why?

Reply to Courtney

Courtney, you argued that Dana did not see her action as an ethical issue at all, and I think that is the key. Jones (1991) proposed that the ethical dimension of a decision registers only when the issue is heavy enough, a property he named moral intensity. In his model, an issue feels weightier when the harm is large, likely and soon, when there is broad agreement that it is wrong, when the victims are close to us and when the damage falls on a few people rather than spreading thinly across many. Backdating a shipment scores low on nearly every dimension from Dana's point of view: the harm is diffuse, delayed and borne by distant investors rather than people she knows. Johnson (2019) describes moral sensitivity as the first ethical competency, and Jones's model explains why it fails in cases like this one. Training could raise intensity by making consequences concrete, for example by showing how revenue misstatements have led to restatements, layoffs and lost retirement savings for real employees. Proverbs 11:3 sets the upright, steered by their integrity, against the treacherous, undone by their own crookedness (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). Integrity begins with seeing clearly, which is why organizations should help employees notice the ethical weight of everyday decisions before the pressure of a deadline arrives. A short case discussion in each quarterly sales meeting, using real examples from the industry, would cost little and could change how representatives see the next borderline request. Managers could also be asked to explain, in their own reviews, how they responded when a representative raised a concern about a target. Over time, that kind of routine attention can make moral sensitivity a habit of the whole sales team rather than a trait some individuals happen to have.

Reply to Andre

Andre, you suggested that Dana's company needs a clearer code of conduct. A code helps, but the research suggests it is not enough by itself. Kaptein and Schwartz (2008) reviewed dozens of empirical studies on the effectiveness of business codes and found mixed results: about a third reported that codes were effective, roughly a third found no significant relationship and the rest reported weak or mixed effects. They concluded that the content of a code, how it is communicated and whether it is enforced determine whether it changes behavior. Kish-Gephart et al. (2010) point the same way, since codes mattered more where they were enforced. Johnson (2019) likewise treats codes as one element of an ethical culture rather than a solution on their own. Dana's company likely already had a policy on revenue recognition; what it lacked was a manager who would enforce it when the numbers were tight. Romans 12:2 urges believers to resist being pressed into the world's mold and to be changed instead through a renewed mind (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). A code that hangs on the wall conforms to the culture around it; one that is lived, discussed and enforced can begin to transform that culture. In practice, that would mean a short code written in plain language, discussed with examples at each sales meeting, backed by a hotline that does not route complaints to the manager involved and enforced visibly when top performers break it. That last point matters most, because employees learn more from what happens to a star who cuts corners than from anything printed in the handbook.

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Johnson, C. E. (2019). Organizational ethics: A practical approach (4th ed.). SAGE.

Jones, T. M. (1991). Ethical decision making by individuals in organizations: An issue-contingent model. Academy of Management Review, 16(2), 366-395. https://doi.org/10.2307/258867

Kaptein, M., & Schwartz, M. S. (2008). The effectiveness of business codes: A critical examination of existing studies and the development of an integrated research model. Journal of Business Ethics, 77(2), 111-127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-006-9305-0

Kish-Gephart, J. J., Harrison, D. A., & Treviño, L. K. (2010). Bad apples, bad cases, and bad barrels: Meta-analytic evidence about sources of unethical decisions at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017103