Chinese environment for management and the issue of ethical behavior

By Shuai Luo, PhD student of the Department of Civil and Engineering and Water INTERface IGEP

With closer approach of my graduation for my PhD degree, there are many points in my education experience deserving to be reviewed. Among all the points, environmental ethical rule is one of the most important regulations needed specific attention for a country or an organization, for the environmental protection. Based on the classes I have learnt so far, there would be many ethical rules that people should consider about and stick to. The ethical rule such as virtue ethics and care ethics requires people to behave in people’s acceptance for each other. Virtue ethics require people to have acceptable characters such as clear and informative communication with others, and willingness to cooperate with other people to make sufficient contribution for the society. Care ethics require people to pay enough attention for others to let the society become more harmonious for the relationships among everyone. The above descriptions are two example ethical principle for everyone to follow. Successfully conformance to these rules would help not only individual or group, but also entire nation to reach to a higher level. However, everything would not process as what we expect, mostly due to the environmental limitation to force people to ignore the fundamental principle. China is my homeland and I am going to make analysis on what is going on here, especially for the environmental management and ethical behavior, in the field of management and company operation.

In China, the force of administration or supervision for the top managements in the business core still need to improve. Sometimes, industry may cheat when required for spending money for waste treatment. This phenomenon is not uncommon in business environment of China, mostly because of non-developed, non-clear ethical standards existing in the field of Chinese business environment.

The inappropriate ethical behavior may lead one company to go down, which is mainly due to the distrust from the people and the business cooperators. The cheating behavior would sabotage the credit system of entire company. The lack of trust, especially among owners of private businesses, causes managers to have a very short-term perspective on their careers. In long term, the distrusted atmosphere becomes a habit or factor that must be consider among the board members in the company management, which may impede some really excellent mangers to make contributions to the company. For example, the manager’s power would be limited. If a manager want to give a proposal for board members to approve, the process period might be very long and complex to get the process done. The impact of the complexity would strongly inhibit the economic boom of the company profit. The ability and competence of a manager cannot have opportunity to be spread and trusted, which is a truly sad phenomenon for the Chinese business environment to get access into the next-stage development.

Weak management and accounting systems in Chinese companies lead to the unethical behaviors, causing the sequentially negative effects on the company operation. For better environment, we need to cooperate together to promote the ethical culture by setting strict rules and laws to constrain mangers or staff away from the unethical behaviors. Reward and punishment system might be an effective tool to encourage the people to make contributions to the companies. Financial incentives are great motivations to help staffs to build long-term commitment to the company. This is one exemplified tool to help the company become better. We should cooperate together to get this done and create a much more harmonious environment for well-being.