Question

Bribery of some correctional officers

• Identify the ethical issue or scenario.
• Describe the relevance that this issue/scenario has to individuals working in institutional corrections.
• Determine if an unethical response to the issue will impact employment, employee morale, employee subculture, inmate subculture and community respect for institutional corrections as an industry.

Answer 1

Bribery has been one of the issue which Organisations( Pvt/govt) have been facing since inception. Generally done to get work done early or for ignorance of rules/ protocol by the offeree. There has been long debate in management aspects as to doing the right things or doing things right. The majority prefers the latter.

Bribery in an organisation if not addressed rightly, spreads like a wildfire. For instance for major of developing/underdeveloped countries, this has long been a problem in the govt as well as private sector. Take example of a tax collection organization in one of the underdeveloped country. The citizens would pay the govt officers to get the tax returns filed accurately to be free from any scrutiny of application. This can be done by bribery to the authority officials to ignore the key rules that should be abided by. This practice by some individuals can be spreaded to other authority individuals from ranks of clerks to directors if not addressed rightly. Thus It can have a bad impact both on the economy as well as other aspects of it.

Impacts of unethical practices:

On employment: if noticed by higher authorities of the govt( in the scenario mentioned above) can lead to adverse impact on the employment of many officials leading to slashing of the corrupt ones.

On employee morale: the honest employees would be greatly impacted by such practices as they feel laggards in the scenario and resort to follow the same practice.

On employee subculture: the culture among also gets impacted adversely as the only quotient that becomes apparent is money and all other feelings, morals, courtesy are completely ignored.

On inmate subculture: similarly this is also adversely effected as the prime and only thing that sustains is related to money and profitability of individuals.

On community respect: the respect for the organization as well as its employees both are adversely hit, if they are engaged in such practices. They would be impacted socially and would be deemed low . Such Organization would also take a hit in terms of its image in public domain of the same country as well as other countries