Social Relevance

1. PROJECT TITLE: ROOTS OF UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR

2. RESEARCH QUESTION: Unethical behavior in organizations is not a new term so what are the important roots of
unethical behavior? How are these roots generated?

3. NEEDS FOR RESEARCH: Are these roots really affecting the businesses of various organizations? And if yes then to
find out the main reasons behind the roots of this unethical behavior to prevent the companies from getting
affected.

4. LITERATURE REVIEW: People often wonder why employees indulge in unethical practices such as lying, bribery,
coercion, conflicting interest, etc. There are certain factors that make the employees think and act in unethical
ways. Some of the influencing factors are ‘pressure to balance work and family, poor communications, poor
leadership, long work hours, heavy work load, lack of management support, pressure to meet sales or profit goals,
little or no recognition of achievements, company politics, personal financial worries, and insufficient resources’
Sullivan, Haunschild, and Page use the broad term unethical behaviors and define it as ‘acts that are illegal under
state or federal laws or acts that are unacceptable to the larger community.’ Johnson, Grieve, and Fujiwara-Grieve
write about corporate deviance stressing the sphere of societal norms and the process of losing social
legitimization of organization’ activities. Werbel and Balkin (2010) highlight that the court convictions of
executives engaged in criminal behavior or misconduct occurred at companies such as Enron, Adelphia, Parmalat,
and Samsung have broad social impacts associated with the collapse or decline of these firms.

5. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: The content analysis method is mainly used to determine nature and scope of social
information. Analyzing the problems of unethical behavior in various companies. Analyzing the changes in
behavior of employees over the period, finding the measure to solve these problems

6. VARIABLES: Ethical behavior bring significant benefits to a business. Such as by attracting customers to the firm's
products, thereby boosting sales and profits. By making employees want to stay in the business, reduce labor
turnover and therefore increase productivity. Attracting investors and keep the company's share price high,
thereby protecting the business from takeover. So, companies, employees, customers are the dependent
variables.

7. OPERATIONALIZATION: This can be done by continuously monitoring the performance of employees and taking
the reviews on monthly basis. Again, by doing research about the organizations which are doing better in ethical
behavior and by analyzing their financial background and by differentiating on those parameters.

8. SIGNIFICANCES OF RESEARCH OR MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS: With the help of this research companies can
eradicate the roots of unethical behavior from their organization and which will help the company to retain its
customers, clients, investors which eventually help the company to grow.

9. PROJECT TIME-TABLE:
• Anticipated start date: January 20th, 2018, Anticipated completion date: March 15th, 2018
• The period of desk research and literature reviewing: 2 weeks
• Any pilot work or feasibility study: 2 weeks
• The sequencing of interventions, baseline, outcome, and evaluation measures: 4 weeks
• The period set aside for data analysis and production of reports: 4 weeks
• Any anticipated obstacles to completing on schedule: 2 weeks

Kunal S Sakhare – M 36