This module looks at three ideas that have a huge impact on organisations. However, each of them acts in a rather subtle way, and it’s not easy for managers to have an effect on any one of them.

The first idea is Culture, which is often defined as “The way we do things around here.” You’ll have noticed that you get a very different feel when you enter different workplaces: some are friendly, others feel very unwelcoming; some are noisy, others are filled with a quiet hum of activity; some seem to be based completely on strict rules and authority, others appear more like a happy family.

How have those various cultures developed? What is their effect on the quality of work, output levels, attitudes to innovation, and so on? To what extent can managers change culture and try to create improvements in some planned way?

The second of our ideas is Ethics. When making a decision or creating a plan, do you think about whether the effects will be fair, whether you comments will be honest, or whether your actions will break some kind of moral rule?

The last two decades have seen many examples of immoral, unethical behaviour that has, in the long term, caused major damage to the organisations concerned. You might think of the banking crisis, oil spills, or the use of sweatshop labour in the clothing or sports industries.

By their nature, many management decisions are complex and you have to consider them from a number of perspectives. For example, you might ask whether a decision will affect someone’s rights, whether the outcome will create overall benefits for society, or whether your decision will be seen as ‘fair’. As you work through this section you’ll see many examples where taking ethical decisions actually creates benefits for the manager and the organisation.

Our final idea is that of Corporate Social Responsibility. This is rather a grand term for ensuring that an organisation acts ethically in relation to the physical environment, to the social environment, and in the way that it is governed.

Overall, the aims are that the environment that we leave to our children will be no worse than we inherited; that our organisation should act ethically towards its employees and everyone else in our society; and that the various stakeholders should all be treated fairly and in an open and transparent manner.

As we said at the start: all three of those ideas have a major impact on organisations. Your challenge in this module is to assess their impacts, and then to see how you can use the ideas to create further improvements in your own organisation and your work