Results-focused Organizational Atmosphere and Unethical Behaviors

Abstract

With frequent incidents of unethical practices and acts in organizations, organizational leaders need to understand some of the causes that facilitate such negative organizational behaviors to lessen the chances of unethical behaviors from occurring. In an effort to understand some of the causes of unethical behavior, this study looks at competitive atmosphere and results-focused performance evaluation as some of the influencing factors on employees' tendency to decide to behave unethically. Competition culture can spur unethical behavior and evaluation culture with emphasis on results-focused which can create a perception among employees of a narrow view of work and how it is defined. The argument of this paper is that such characteristics can create environment for unethical behaviors and serve as an added push upon employees to choose to behave unethically. Collection of survey results from those working in Busan area were used to test the hypotheses using regression. Data analysis showed that in organizational atmosphere that is overly competitive and results-focused can influence employees to behave unethically. Implications and future research suggestions are discussed in conclusions.