Ethics in Organizational Development and Change

Organizational development and change management helps the organization to achieve objectives, overcoming challenges and to be successful. Organizational change differs from company to company, according to the nature of activities and the change activities involved. There are many change related activities known as change models such as, Lewins change model, Kotters eight steps and others. (Bashir J, Afzal S: www.highlykeen.com/images/Ethics%20Based%20Model.pdf)

According to Hiatt (2003) change management is a set of instruments, approaches and practices for managing the human side of change that are important for a person or group to shift from its present situation to a new situation in order to achieve the desired goals of change effort. (Hiatt J:2003)

When change and development of organization comes, then one must be aware of its ethical implications. According to Weiss (2006) ethics is important in business because when organization, its members and groups are determined to do good and ethical things in ethical ways then all gain from it that is the stakeholders and organizational members. (Weiss J: 2006)

When a change effort is initiated then its ethical implications must be studied and looked upon with great care by the consultants and organizational members who are involved in this effort must know of the underling ethical issues which might arise, figure out a way to tackle them and see how they affect every step in change process. (Nielsen R, Nykodym N, Brown J: 1991)

Ethics can be defined as: Moral principle that governs a persons behavior or the conducting of an activity (Oxford Dictionaries)

A branch of philosophy which deals with values to human actions, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions. (Extracted from: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ethics)

Professional Ethics:
When it comes to business ethics then professional ethics comes in view. Professional ethics refers to norms of ethical conduct particular to a profession. It deals with distinction between situations from being a human being and situations arising from a business environment in which they are involved. (Wueste D, 1994)

Professional people have the knowledge and expertise to deal with different situations and in decision making. Now, how this knowledge and skill can be used to adhere to providing services to organizational employees and organization as a whole can be seen as an ethical issue. Professional ethics is governed by some standards and rules such as code of conduct or code of ethics. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_ethics)

Code of ethics includes these aspects: Academic honesty, Adherence to confidentiality agreements,
Data privacy, proper Handling of human subjects, Impartiality in data analysis and professional consulting, Professional accountability, Resolution of conflicts of interest and Software piracy. (Davison R, Kock N: http://www.cb.cityu.edu.hk/is/research/ISWorld/ethics/index.htm)

According to John Hardwig, professional holds a social position in an organization and has special rights, good income, high status and responsibilities because of their specialties in a certain field of knowledge and experience. In every organization, there is a heavy reliance on expertise of the professionals, be it intellectual, decision making or other. Hardwig suggested that ethics comes in play here as ethics of expertise. Ethics involves responsibilities and responsibility includes an aspect of trust that is Organizational members trusts a professionals expertise. So, they have a social role to play to cater the expectations and trust in doing their part with full integrity. (Wueste D, 1994)

Ethical dilemmas related to Change

The change comes in an organization with the help of consultants. The role of consultant is very much important in this whole process to be ethically and morally correct. For this instance, individuals in an organization have to be respected as they are key component of an organizational change movement. So the consultant as a change agents behavior is also a very important aspect. Here, Kurt Lewins assertion on the fact that there should be consent and co-operation amongst all stakeholders should be given the priority in an OD intervention implementation. Ethical standards of an OD professional come into play here, where he is appointed all the details and trust of all members of client organization. This gives birth to some ethical concerns which are; that interventions must be selected which have a high chance of being helpful to the client organization, utmost commitment is needed from the OD professional when it comes to selecting the perfect intervention for client, as all future and decisions

depend on it. The consultant must keep in mind of what his own capacity is. If he chooses a particular intervention to be implemented then he must ask a question of whether he has the skills and knowledge to manage that intervention or not. As the client has given all the resources and information to consultant, then its job of consultant or OD professional to keep the client informed of all the details and the nature of decisions that are required for a certain intervention to occur and be successful. The most important point for OD professional is to keep aside all personal interest and motives and work wholly for the client. Another important authority which lies with the OD professional is the information which he has gathered. All this data contains information which is best to be kept confidential and by maintaining confidentiality the OD professional fulfils an ethical duty. The OD professional must be aware of not forcing the members to comply with his intervention demands but let them chose and be a part of it. (Winstanley D, 2000) In addition to what was previously mentioned as the ethical standards of an OD professional, a consultant should also let the organizational members involved know of how the vision of change aligns to organization and the future. According to McKendall (1993) when organizational change process starts it increases power of management within the organization. This happens because of the perspective that top management is in charge and right and whatever they say members have to follow. This leads to ambiguity and uncertainty of why the change is occurring and why should the members follow the leader? This leads to an ethical concern of forced to conformity. (Denhardt B, Denhardt J, Aristigueta M, 2008)

Coercion/ Manipulation: This ethical concern becomes at some point, a means of coercion and
manipulation. So how should the consultants go by it how can the consultant introduce change which is both effective and ethical?

The consultant must be self aware and should have the knowledge of what activities would be unethical. For example Coercion is generally taken as an unethical activity where the person is forced by another person to act in a certain way under threat of losing life, job or other. But coercion is not always obvious. Consultants who go with the rule of conformity to whatever is required may use coercion but it is always noted that it may work in short run but fails in long run. Furthermore it creates bitterness and anger amongst the employees which may push them towards a path of strikes and result in high turnover. (Denhardt B, Denhardt J, Aristigueta M, 2008)

Manipulation means a type of influence a person has on another in which the manipulator deceives the other intentionally. According to Seabright and Moberg (1998) manipulation can be of two types, situational manipulation in which the target is manipulated into thinking that there is no second option and he has to go with what is there in front of him and second is psychological manipulation in which if the target wants to know the alternatives he has, the manipulator misdirects him. So manipulation is nothing but scrapping the autonomy of choice of a person for a certain objective to be achieved. In any case, manipulation and coercion provide to be tools for deception, threats and dishonesty which are considered as unethical. According to White and Wooten (1983) manipulation and coercion occur in an organizational development when that development requires the members to cut their values against their will. (Denhardt B, Denhardt J, Aristigueta M, 2008)

Misrepresentation:

According to French and Bell (1978) there are some other ethical concerns

with job of OD professional such as; ethical issue related to OD professional is Misrepresentation. It occurs when the consultant misrepresents his skills and experience. The consultant presents exaggerated results of an intervention process if conducted by him. Misrepresentation can also occur if

the client organization does not accurately represents the organizations; interests, goals and needs. (French W, Bell C, Vohra V, 2006)

Promising unrealistic outcomes is another unethical behavior on account of OD consultant.

Consultant makes high level promises to get into contract with the client and gets the contract but this may prove to be counterproductive for the client organization obviously and prove to be bad for consultants over al credibility and skills. (French W, Bell C, Vohra V, 2006)

Collusion: It can be explained by this example; a consultant comes in agreement with client of
conducting a team-building activity when the head of that D is on vacations. This tactic is not the answer to deal with the problems created by the D but this can create a lack of trust between the client and consultant. And it will intensify Ds dysfunctional behavior as a revenge of conducting activities when he was gone. Another example explaining the power that a consultant with expertise in group dynamics can be used for good and or harm is the colluding with other members of group to establish feedback situation in which Ds defects will be too apparent specially to Ds boss. Instead of creating a situation in which all members performance is improved and defects are reduced, this intervention or activity is only aimed at D. and in an intervention in which a particular person is aimed the OD process will fail. (French W, Bell C, Vohra V, 2006)

Technical Ineptness: Unethical behavior from lack of expertise of OD professional is a concern of

professional/technical ineptness of the consultant. For example, a consultant goes into depth of an intervention and asks the group of members of client organization to be in a team building activity and provide feedback about the leadership although the client organization did not ask the consultant to do

such activity so the group did not show a readiness or a willingness to do so. Another example can be that after an initial stage diagnosis, it comes up that a feedback intervention is required by the client organization but the consultant does not have the necessary skill and expertise to conduct such intervention. But still the consultant ignores it and goes ahead with the intervention implementation. Now, he does not possess any ability to design an appropriate and effective feedback system. In this case, the unethical thing for a consultant would be to go into a decision of which he has no knowledge about, which in turn may hurt the client organization. (French W, Bell C, Vohra V, 2006) However, if such a situation arises for a consultant then he must look for coaching regarding the particular case from an experienced person/ colleague or a shadow consultant. Who may assist the consultant into managing and designing a good feedback system for client? So by analyzing the examples we can deduct two points as ethical standards that, OD consultant should not use interventions in which he has less skills and expertise and should not use an intervention which is of less help to the client organization. (French W, Bell C, Vohra V, 2006)

Misuse of data: it is again is an unethical behavior if conducted by the consultant or the client. This
is the reason behind why confidentiality is so important to maintain in OD process. For example, if a consultant discloses the information he gathered for diagnosis to the boss and this information contains names and comments of the subordinates who provided information regarding bosss dysfunctional behavior would cause harm to the subordinates. Another example can be of showing department Ss file and information to department Z without the permission of department S. Misuse of data also includes distortions to the data. For example, in a case where the consultant interviews some heads of departments of organization and consultant finds out that department head of production is not pleased with departmental head of Sales and his/her practices. And production head is also proving to be a difficult person to interview by the consultant and not being cooperative. So

the consultant becomes angry at production head. At time of feeding back the data gathered, the consultant starts to present his findings, and over states and exaggerates the bad aspects about production department because he is angry at head of productions. This is an unethical conduct of consultant, where the consultant faces such issues then consultant should keep aside personal feelings And be objective to the cause. (French W, Bell C, Vohra V, 2006)

Deception and Conflict of values: Deception occurs in many forms, in any form it is unethical
and will always result badly. For example a company takes on a major reengineering effort, which gives the employees an assurance of job security but then it proceeded with the effort and lay off a huge chunk of work force. These layoffs came after the company had given assurance to its employees of job security and promoting team work and employee empowerment in operations. In such case the OD consultant must put pressure on the top management to take a look at the consequences of reengineering which the company wants to pursue and be open about it to the employees. Another ethical responsibility of the consultant and company would be to take care of the individual who are affected by the change. (French W, Bell C, Vohra V, 2006)

Value and Goal conflict: this arises when the members involved in change process are confused
of why there is need for change and are ambiguous of goals defined by the change and when the client and consultant disagrees over a set of goals. (Cummings T, Worley C: 2008)

Ethics based Change Model

According to Bhaskar, Bhal and Ratnam (2003) while implementing a change process, a lot of ethical issues arise such as, to the organizational members, processes involved and organizations responsibility towards the employees. These ethical issues may arise because at initial level the consultant did not foresee the possibilities of these issues coming up and maybe because the goals set by the change process are not in conformity to the goals and values of the members of organization. Hence, the client and consultant must be open to all members involved about the issues arising from the change and thus, promote their cooperation and participation in the change effort. A model related to incorporating change while being ethically sound has been developed which fulfills corporate social responsibility as well as rights of the parties involved.

The first step would be to define required change that is a proper analysis and study of need of change. If change is not required urgently then do not implement any change interventions and maintain the current situation. The second step would be to evaluate the change in light of ethics. Whether it is catering to everyones rights and clarifying the perceived obligations after change. The third step would be to elaborate upon the ethical change by aligning the change with rights and obligations of stakeholders. This provides with clarity and promotes participation. The fourth step would be to communicate the change to all stakeholders and be open about the steps involved in implementation of change. Fifth step, is the actual implementation of change, here everyone knows about the change steps and activities involved so that aids in the process. Sixth step is to re-evaluate the implemented change effort and getting feedback from stakeholders about it. Seventh step (the final step) would be to build upon the feedback. If positive then sustain the successful change and if negative then review the steps to find a possible loop-hole to cover. (Bashir J, Afzal S: www.highlykeen.com/images/Ethics%20Based%20Model.pdf)

Conclusion:
After reviewing all data regarding ethics of change, it can be identified that consultant has an important responsibility to carry out everything democratically and carryout the process without coercion, manipulation, deception and other ethical dilemmas discussed previously. By doing all these things the autonomy and participation of employees is promoted while creating an ethically sustainable environment, where all stakeholders rights are clear and obligations have been communicated to them (Svara, 2006). And by providing the members with code of ethics, which clarifies all the standards of operation in an organization can help diffuse the ambiguity among the members and consultants external or internal. (Strahlendorf: www.bcsp.org/pdf/PresentationsArticles/714_1.pdf)

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