Discuss 6 of the 12 practices that prevent unethical behavior. Which practices do you believe are most useful?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

(A) Hire people who are less likely to be motivated by personal gain. To do this, correctional organizations need a well-developed selection process with extensive background checks on potential hires (Stohr & Collins, 2014).
(B) Pay people a professional wage as then they will be less likely to be tempted to engage in unethical behavior for personal gain.
(C) Encourage professional development of employees through further education, training, and engagement in professional organizations as employees who are immersed in a professional and learning subculture are more likely to encourage positive change in others and improve the workplace, and they may be less likely to be tolerant of a workplace subculture that fosters unethical behavior.
(D) Develop an ethics code with employee input and review it regularly in the department. By involving a cross section of staff in the development of an ethics code, more staff are likely to feel like they “own it” and therefore support it.
(E) Require extensive training in ethics at the beginning of employment and throughout the employee’s career. More and ongoing training will reinforce the need to behave ethically, and it will undercut negative subcultural influences.
(F) Supervise people sufficiently and check up on what they are doing and how they are doing it.
(G) Provide support for positive changes in the workplace that will enhance the ability of workers to do the job right. Sometimes staff will claim that they cannot act ethically because there are not enough resources (e.g., time, staff) to do so; by ensuring there are enough resources—and this is hard to do in the public sector these days—managers make it possible for employees to do the work the right and the ethical way.
(H) Discipline violators of ethics, and if the violation of the rules or law is serious enough, fire them. Doing this will reinforce a positive subculture that is supportive of ethical work practice.
(I) Promote those who behave ethically and include ethics related measures in evaluations. By doing this, managers will motivate all to support ethical practice.
(J) Encourage whistle-blowing (the reporting of wrongdoing or problems in the work-place) and make it possible for people to do so anonymously. Despite an ethical manager and worker’s best efforts, there is sometimes illegal or unethical behavior going on in the workplace, and because of the power of subcultures, correctional workers need to be able to report this behavior without fear of reprisals.
(K) Develop the means for all employees to provide input into the decisions that are made by and for the organization, as doing so is more likely to be a check on management, uses the knowledge workers have, instills ownership of the work by those who do it, and leads to greater job satisfaction, less turner, and more commitment to the job (Stohr & Collins, 2014).
(L) Encourage involvement of outsider review and professional engagement (have an oversight board, support involvement in professional organizations, provide access to researchers and politicians and even the media), as more openness is more likely to reduce unethical behavior and defuse the power of negative subcultures.