Business ethics are rare in today's world of rampant organizational abuse and management malpractice. According to recent surveys, such as the National Business Ethics Survey, more than 50 percent of all employees in the United States observe misconduct or unethical behavior at work, but most of them do not report it because they fear retaliation from management or coworkers.

As reported in Business & Legal Reports, the Gartner Group, Inc., claims, "70 percent of enterprises that do not recognize and minimize employee dissatisfaction will have to fend off legal actions and public relations disasters caused by poor service, poor quality and poor business practices. Enterprise executives, especially those in high-pressure technology and knowledge-based companies, should understand the correlation between employee mistreatment and business disruption.” According to Diane Tunick Morello, Vice President and Research Director at Gartner, "Executives and managers who see their companies engaging in mistreatment of employees should raise a warning flag and begin to quantify and qualify the risks to attracting staff, maintaining service, building a customer base and broadening business. Executives who ignore or downplay the connection between employee mistreatment and business turmoil put their employees, customers, partners and shareholders at risk.” Malpracticing management represents a HUGE RISK that most executives and organizations today don't fully recognize.

So why does management malpractice and organizational abuse occur so often in today's organizations, despite the high price? Here are five reasons why it has become so prevalent:

First, people in organizations are, at times, biased, egotistical, narrow-minded, thoughtless, dogmatic, insensitive or otherwise flawed. Okay, so we're all prone to malpractice management even though we all suffer from it. Yes, which is why it's going to take a widespread revolution to stop this growing epidemic of management malpractice—it happened to me, so I might as well do it to others.

Second, management is malpracticed because it's easier, cheaper and faster to malpractice management than it is to well-practice management, especially during times of crisis and extreme change. Tyrannical, authoritarian, command and control approaches to management are always easier, cheaper and faster in the short term but they destroy freedom, creativity, motivation and organizational cultures in the long term. Vigilantly practicing great management principles takes time, effort and commitment; but the pay-off is huge—take a look at the results delivered by Fortune's most admired companies. Why are they so admired? Because great organizations don't persist in malpracticing management. When malpractices do creep in, as they always do, they are quickly addressed and eliminated.

Third, because of the heightened stress and strain associated with today's business environment-extreme complexity, radical change and savvy competition-managers and leaders too often lose their focus on fundamental principles and core values because urgency overshadows importance, hard drives out soft and information obscures interpretation. In other words they get distracted, sidetracked and diverted from one of the things that matters most—i.e., the ongoing motivation, performance, creativity, satisfaction and well-being of their people. A crisis comes along and all of the so-called great management principles and excellent organizational values get thrown out the window or are temporarily ignored in favor of hard-edged, results-at-any-cost management—whatever it takes to get the crisis resolved is a common excuse for management malpractice.

Fourth, people in organizations are continually growing, developing, and, to one degree or another, striving to become more effective, complete and balanced as managers and leaders. Consequently, most managers and leaders are still incomplete and unbalanced in their discharge of management responsibilities—e.g., heart, mind and body are often out of balance or fail to function as a complete whole, either there's too much rational analysis at the expense of heart-felt empathy or vi

ce versa or there's too much talk and not enough action or vice versa or too much preoccupation with the short-term at the expense of the long-term or vice versa and so on. Becoming more complete and balanced as a manager or leader is vital to seeing, exposing and preventing management malpractice. Organizational cultures either hasten or hinder managerial and leadership development.

Five, managers and leaders in most organizations don't take the time or make it a priority to really listen to their employees, discuss management principles that are frequently malpracticed, or develop the managerial talents of their direct reports. They let urgent matters overshadow more important matters.

Management malpractice has become accepted as "standard operating procedure” in far too many organizations today. Sadly, leaders and managers in such organizations are expected to demean, manipulate, deceive, oppress, abuse and injure their people. When they don't, their employees are surprised. How sick is that? People are becoming increasingly distrustful and cynical about their organizations because too many of their leaders and managers either unconsciously allow or openly foster management malpractice in their organizations and because not enough of their co-workers are willing or able to stand up against it.

Overcoming management malpractice will require more than new laws, regulations, rules, systems, penalties, punishments and remedies, because management malpractice thrives in highly structured and disciplined hierarchies. Only senior executives, middle managers, first line employees, entrepreneurs and professional service providers who develop an awareness to see it, the courage to expose it and a firm resolve to prevent it from happening again and again in the workplace have a chance to eliminate management malpractice in their organizations. Once exposed, management malpractices can never have the same smothering and stifling effect upon you and your organization that they previously had. In fact, ongoing exposure of management malpractices fosters a transparent working environment where individuals, teams and leaders can work together more openly, honestly and collaboratively to prevent malpractice in the future. Time and attention to people-their performance, their satisfaction, their ideas, their motivation, their insights, their sense of meaning and fulfillment, their disappointments, their match with their jobs, their growth and development, their sense of belonging, their contributions, their dreams, their fears, their needs, their desires to create value, their struggles, their weaknesses, their yearnings and strivings, their personal lives, their interactions with coworkers and customers, their teamwork, their results, their well-being — that's the key to preventing management malpractice in organizations.

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