Techniques to Improve Violation of Integrity at Workplace

The paper demonstrates three different aspect of leadership to deal with violation of integrity within the Dutch police force. The three aspects mainly focus on setting an example at workplace, strictness and openness. To further make a research in this field the author conducted a survey which included a set of questionnaire to a specific group of police officers. It was found that further research should combine different sources and methods.

Keywords: police, Management styles, ethics, leadership, and corruption.

Techniques to Overcome the Violation of Integrity at Workplace

According to the authors, the paper highlights on the impact of three leadership styles on integrity violations committed by the Dutch police force. The paper mainly focuses on three main aspects of leadership styles that affect the integrity within an organization namely setting an example, strictness and openness. It was found by the author that the three leadership aspects mentioned above influence the behavior of police officers, but the adverse affects of the variables on various types of integrity violations differ.

To further make a research or study in this field the author collected the data by means of questionnaire from five regional police organizations in the Netherlands. I agree with the author that all the three aspects are equally important to avoid violation of integrity but a multifaceted leadership approach will be most helpful in improving the integrity of police organizations.

Integrity is one of the essential values that employers seek in the workers that they employ. Honesty and trust is the central to integrity. According to author C.S Lewis, integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is observing you. Inculcating integrity in oneself means thoughtful, tolerant and choosing to live in agreement with one’s morality. A person is said to be integral when he/ she acts virtually despite least bothered about the consequences.

Creating integrity at the workplace means development of highly competent standards, and representing the values of the organization. This paper mainly concentrates on the abuse of integrity caused by police misbehavior at their place of work. Some of the violations of misconduct can be illustrated as corruption, fraud, conflicts of interest as a result of jobs and actions outside the organization, indecent method of policing and abuse and manipulation of information.

The author has focused on three hypotheses. Among the three aspects of leadership mentioned by the author, I believe that setting an example is an efficient way of safeguarding integrity of an organization. I think people who showcase integrity draw their attention because they are honest and on whom one can trust upon. I believe that a good role model is one who can communicate with its co workers and solve the problems. People are inspired by the leaders who explain where they are going wrong and help them solve their problems through communication (NGUYEN, 2011). Great role models have a business plan, and replicate it until everyone understands. A role model is someone we look up to and believe that the change that leader has brought within us can make a better person out of it and help us grow further in personal and work life.i feel that a role model holds accountability of the actions and inspire others to do the same. A role model never blames others or gives an excuse. No one is perfect in this world. Everyone makes mistakes in their life. Everybody learns through mistakes but the only difference between a leader and a common man is a leader accepts its mistake and figures it out how to avoid it in future. In this way other colleagues will get inspired by you and look up to you. For example Steve Jobs. He believed that if you want to grow in your life and excel in your career or organization and get to the leadership position always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, which will inspire you to work more hard to achieve your goal and help you learn something new every day (Weaver, 2018).

According to 2nd hypotheses mentioned in the paper, I agree that stricter the managers are with their employees and punish the one who go against the rules; it is less likely to violate integrity. Sometimes people take advantage of the management if the manager is very flexible. I believe that when there are rules in any organization and one knows what will be the consequences in future then that person thinks twice before doing something which is against the rules and which would destroy the reputation of the individual as well as of the company.

Strictness is particularly important in controlling fraud, corruption and abuse of resources. As mentioned in the paper I support the fact that importing rules and punishing the wrongdoers help in preventing the use of work hours as well as management resources for personal benefits. Rewarding the workers is also another solution to avoid violation of integrity. For example Chicago Police Department in 2016, officers across the United States misused private law enforcement database information illegally, often looking into the private information of people.( Kolthoff, 2016). The data misuse resulted in cases involving personal stalking, harassment, and even identity theft. Another example is the Enron. Skilling the COO of the organization was unsuccessful in implementing practical business plans due to lack of personal knowledge and experience even though he had vision of huge trading enterprise. Lack of interest in operational management, inadequate spending controls and focus on rapid growth incentivized by compensation schemes created totally dysfunctional organization. This further led to lack of transparency in business. Enron collapsed as a result of interacting decision process. Personal ambition and greed seemed to overshadow much of their corporate and individual lives. The top executives tried to maximize their individual income by participating in scandalous activities. In conclusion my idea of giving the example of Chicago police and Enron is to convey that few norms and rules would put a hold on the police officers/ workers to do something which is against the rules. In other words strictness acts as curb to numerous reliability issues.

Further the author also explains that besides strictness and setting an example, openness also plays an important role in curbing the integrity. I think that being open with your employees’ means being transparent at workplace. I believe that Openness between managers and employees creates trust and leads to successful organization. I support the fact that Transparency fosters a type of comfort ability and encourages the employees to be creative and share their input. (Merrell, 2015).

Anechiarico and Jacobs argue that value and culture based techniques might be more beneficial than compliance, sanction and rules. I believe that there should be balance of both value and culture based strategies. From the study conducted by the author I found that role model has influence on all kinds of misbehavior. It can be concluded that violation due to role modeling are mainly concerned due quality of personal relationship like favoritism, gossiping etc. when we compare the effect of strictness to that of other two characteristics of leadership, I found that strictness has strongest effect on external favoritism. After reading the paper I found that openness was strongly related to one violation, mainly taking missing belongings for personal use.

There are many factors that are responsible for the violation of misconduct by police officers like ill treatment, misconduct whilst off duty, improper method of policing and corruption. I believe that corruption is the most common misconduct among all the other factors affecting violation of integrity. Corruption is seen as bribery and which yields personal benefits. Public servant who is corrupt operates in the interest of a third party in order to gain certain reimbursement or to reciprocate. Additionally, benefits need not only be monetary, but can also be indirect personal favors or gains; for example, for one’s political party, family, or friends. Corruption in the form of cronyism involves behavior that yields benefits for family, friends, or associates. The violation caused by corruption can be sub categorized as jobs and an assignment assigned to friends or third party, which means hiring someone who are friends of the policymakers. Other category is favoring a partner of an administrative by assigning an assignment outside of the acquisition rules. The last category is corruption in the form of bribery. A high-level executive went on a tour to the USA under the excuse of client study at the invitation of, and paid by, a dealer. Reported it to the board and a confidential counselor, nothing was done with it. Subsequently, millions were spent in trade with this supplier.

Among the three aspects mentioned by the author, I believe that being strict, having norms and regulations is the most effective way of avoiding violation of integrity. When someone is always keeping a watch on you and you know that the consequences will adversely affect you, one is always conscious whether whatever an individual is doing is ethical or unethical. I think in case of role model it completely depends on the individual how much good things one inculcates from an individual. Every individual has different way of thinking so I believe that role model will not always be beneficial or there will be limitations in bringing a change in an individual. Openness also helps to curb integrity but only when impact is positive.

I believe that as the author has focused only on three aspects of leadership, I don’t think that will help to come to a conclusion or would completely eradicate the violation of integrity. There are other factors also such as organizational structure and culture which the author should look for to avoid violation of integrity. I believe that the methodology used puts limitation to the study or area of concern. The survey conducted through questionnaire may result in bias results and might be repetitive. I further felt that there are shortcomings in terms survey conducted in terms of gender the percentage of male and female is not specific. I feel that further research is necessary.