Premium Essay

Bad Apple

In: Business and Management

Submitted By Ticara1006
Words 1018
Pages 5
Are so called bad apples the cause of ethical problems in organizations? Why or Why not?
According to the bad apple theory, people are good or bad and organizations are powerless to change these folks. This bad apple idea16 is appealing in part because unethical behavior can then be blamed on a few individuals with poor character.
Although it’s unpleasant to fire people, it’s relatively easier for organizations to search for and discard a few bad apples than to search for some organizational problem that caused the apple to rot.

Despite the appeal of the bad apple idea, ‘‘character’’ is a poorly defined concept, and when people talk about it, they rarely define what they mean. They’re probably referring to a complex combination of traits that are thought to guide individual behavior in ethical dilemma situations. If character guides ethical conduct, training shouldn’t make much difference because character is thought to be relatively stable: it’s difficult to change, persists over time, and guides behavior across different contexts.
Character develops slowly as a result of upbringing and the accumulation of values that are transmitted by schools, families, friends, and religious organizations.
Therefore, people come to educational institutions or work organizations with an already defined good or poor character. Good apples will be good and bad apples will be bad.

In fact, people do have predispositions to behave ethically or unethically. And sociopaths can certainly slip into organizations with the sole intent of helping themselves to the organization’s resources, cheating customers, and feathering their own nests at the expense of others. Famous scoundrels like Bernie Madoff definitely come to mind. Such individuals have little interest in ‘‘doing the right thing,’’ and when this type of individual shows up in your organization, the best thing

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