Premises of the Article and Supporting Points

Kennedy (2017) analyzes the unethical activities that are frequent in businesses and how leaders can encourage or terminate them in the essay "Why Powerful People Fail to Stop Bad Behaviors in Their Organizations." The thesis of the paper is that most powerful individuals do not stop immoral behavior. This thesis is supported by a number of facts. First, supervisors define objectives, but younger staff members are charged for carrying them out. Unfortunately, some workers behave unethically by making poor decisions. Second, according to Kennedy (2017), those in positions of authority often refuse to speak out against unethical behavior because they are afraid of retaliation from other bosses. Finally, Kennedy (2017) states that group identification makes it difficult for many leaders to promote ethical behaviors in their organizations. Leaders belong to a group of influential members, which makes it difficult to perceive unethical actions. Instead, they consider some of the immoral acts to be ethical. Hence, they find it challenging to convince junior employees to behave according to the stipulated ethical standards.

Author’s Description of Organizational Behavior

The author describes organizational behavior using individual and group dynamics. The major focus is on leadership, ethics, and accountability. Kennedy (2017) states that organization’s ethics results from nature of leaders. Therefore, leaders have a high responsibility in developing the best ethical standards. Besides, they need to adhere to those values and persuade their followers to observe them. Furthermore, description of the organizational behavior identifies how leaders promote unethical practices.





Importance of Organization Behavior

According to Yukl et al. (2013), leadership is the first determinant of organizational culture. Therefore, leaders have a role in shaping the rules and ethics within an organization. In the article, Kennedy (2017) indicates that leaders holding powerful positions determine the ability of an organization to adhere to its culture, particularly on maintaining high ethical standards. However, some leaders promote unethical behaviors. Therefore, it becomes a challenge for an organization to develop a culture that supports ethics. As leaders achieve high ranks, they inherit some of the unethical practices of their predecessors. Consequently, the organization adopts the unethical behaviors into its systems and structures (Kennedy, 2017).

Ethics is another key factor of organizational behavior (Van et al., 2015). As noted by Kennedy (2017), each organization has a defined code of ethics both leaders and followers should observe. However, leaders always influence their employees to behave unethically. For instance, when they fail to recognize unethical behaviors or when they engage in unethical practices, they influence other people to behave in the same way. According to Kennedy (2017), leaders should instill morals into their employees by acting according to the organization’s rules and code of ethics.

The final element or organizational behavior is accountability. Van et al. (2015) indicate that leaders have a great accountability in improving the performance of their organization. A primary responsibility of leaders is to encourage their followers to adhere to the organization’s code of ethics. The approaches useful in adhering to the required values include taking a firm stand against unethical behaviors and using individuals’ high rank within a team to influence members to follow the expected behaviors.



Business Concepts Identified in the Article

Business concepts discussed in the article focuses mainly on the moral principles which an organization, leaders or employees should follow. The author focuses on honesty as an important aspect of business. Honesty helps in adhering to the organizational ethics. Another concept is transformational leadership. According to Kennedy (2017), transformational leadership involves encouraging other employees to achieve their goal while observing the code of ethics. Therefore, it becomes easy to maintain a positive growth in the organization.

































References

Kennedy, J. (2017). Why Powerful People Fail to Stop Bad Behaviors in Their Organizations. Time.com. Retrieved 16 May 2017, from http://time.com/4705023/leaders-bad-behavior/

Van Gils, S., Van Quaquebeke, N., van Knippenberg, D., van Dijke, M., & De Cremer, D. (2015). Ethical leadership and follower organizational deviance: The moderating role of follower moral attentiveness. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(2), 190-203.

Yukl, G., Mahsud, R., Hassan, S., & Prussia, G. E. (2013). An improved measure of ethical leadership. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 20(1), 38-48.