There are innumerable discussions around Corporate and business ethics but most of them tend to be centered around a person's behavior within the firm and I have not come across much on the behavioral rules for the members in the top management of a company towards employees.
'Employee:management' behavior varies across industries. Traditional manufacturing industries who employ 'labor' have their own way of managing people and the ethical aspects take a backseat when employee management resembles ring master behavior. Although at times unethical, the harsh methods are the only solution for multiple labor problems in these sectors. The unethical behavior equating to corporate paap is quite high in these industries and go unchecked usually. However, there is a constant scare of labor union backlash, curbing the limit of corporate 'paap' that one can commit!
The other end of the spectrum are the advanced industries like Financial services/Management consulting where employee management is structured around giving massive independence and any infringement or bossing around irks employees(although it still happens). The beaten around topics of corporate ethics are mostly relevant to these industries where the focus is on being responsible for the independence and not misusing it. However, there isn't too much talk on the ethical aspects in employee management. There is probably no need of it because smart people working with smart people usually dont need a rule book. Additionally, the HR departments have a very active complaints mechanism because they recognize that people are the core strength of the company. If ever, any manager were to adopt sly practices of employee management, the HR has the teeth to counter them effectively. The corporate paap in these lines of work is limited to
The IT services industry was a place where all the parameters of an advanced sector were relevant. But it has fast transitioned into a commoditized space leading to a mixed situation at large companies. The IT services firms have seen an exodus of the truly smart people and quantity over quality has become the norm (natural transition). So what happened to the culture in these firms during this transition?
It must be noted that the cultural transition in these firms has to be seen in separate categories :
1) Global firms who grew their Indian arms so much, that the headcount in India far outnumbers any other region in their operations - IBM/Accenture/CSC etc
2)Indian firms that went global - Infosys/TCS/Wipro/ etc..
In either category, given the change in culture, the only way for an individual to rise up corporate the ladder has to do with the head count that you command and (funnily enough) not linked to the economic impact you have on the firm's financials. So, when all that matters is headcount, the shrewd managers do employ any tactic that will get them through each year with more people reporting to them. Add to the fact that the performance management framework is not robust(most of these companies have increased headcount at an insane rate), the manager is at complete liberty to "screw" team members he hates(remember that in a commoditized industry, skill differentiation tends to be lower) or promote team member he/she may have a personal affinity with. The HR backbone, which is meant to be the normalizer has been very weak in most of these firms, thus allowing a free hand to managers.
Therefore there are situations where managers can get away with the most ruthless decisions , which can be equated to what i call "Corporate paap". Increasingly witnessed in the IT industry where the deliverables are intangible and the quality of the leaders is increasingly average. Many a times, the HR in some firms directly indulge in manipulation and unfair practices, because who is to check! Who will police the police.
While I understand that "this is life" ..."deal with it" ...yada yada, why not tighten the focus on ethics in the corporates, why not build in checks and balances that look into the ethical practices of most of the business leaders within the firms? Is it it impossible or just not worth the time or effort?
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"Ethical dilemma"
What sparked this discussion on this topic? Few years ago, during the crisis times, I happened to witness a situation where a particular "Director" decided to not give a raise to any of his team members in the name of crisis, but did choose to fly around on multiple trips around the country in business class to attend an annual gathering at various cities. Simple back of the envelope calculation will tell you that each trip costs about INR 40k and 4 such trips in a quarter will cost the company INR 160k. I did see that he particularly decided to lower the rating for a couple of software engineers(who btw, make approx INR 30k a month and are happy with an increment of INR 3k/month) in the name of crisis. Anyone who lives in a metros will tell you how hard it is to lead a life with that salary and any increment can make a significant difference to the employees(particularly at the entry levels).
In summary, while INR 160k was spent on "non critical business" travel, the denial of the increment to the employee at best save the firm 36x2 = INR 72k . What am i missing here?! The leader has the power to overrule an increment (for completely external reasons beyond the control of the employee), but had the luxury of enjoying some perks that are not tightly monitored? Could the leader use his/her conscience?
Every time a company goes into a cost transformation mode(read cost cutting), there is a framework that ensures that the right actions are taken to control costs. These are , in most cases, not watertight, leading to potential situations like the one above. It is saddening to see a downward trend in the quality of leadership, especially in the IT services space, that not so long ago was a revered industry.
