CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Worldwide, changes are taking place tremendously. One change is affecting all countries around the world including Nigeria. Some scholars urge that the only thing that is permanent in life is change. No situation is permanent in life. Thus, the Nigerian work environment has become liable to change, considering the dynamic and complex issues that are faced daily. The emerging trend in work that is beginning to serve as a mark of merit or critical edge is the level of workplace ethics that is dwelling within an organization. In the face of the emerging world economy, an organization that is involved in a proper framework for good governance must practice work ethics and incorporate good values as part of its organizational culture if it must achieve higher performance (Omisore et al, 2015). In a present world, work ethics has been an interesting subject in management and business in general, due to its importance in evaluating employees’ behavior and performance and it is so critical to organizational performance (Schminke et al. 2015). Companies and institutions all over the world, both public and private maintain codes of corporate governance for managing ethical performance (Rossouw, 2015).  Despite its importance still no single organization is safe from corporate scandals (Samir et al; 2015), in years malpractices have been observed in organizations which go beyond legal and ethical context. It has been argued that non observance or non existence of some set of ethical values have been a contributory factor to the Africa predicaments in leaderships in most African states (Agbude & Etete, 2013). For instance the country has faced corporate failures on banking sector in 1997, 26 commercial banks failed due to financial irregularities such as AfriBank Plc and Bank PHB (Bello, 2012).

Purposeful actions in a proactive manner are required of contemporary organizations to achieve desired level of performance from workers with cognizance to the acceptable norms and best practices in the industry they belong too and country of operation. In the words of Schminke et al (2015), one of such action known as ethics is increasing, with work ethics as one of such actions that can bring about the desired performance level of employees job performance, irrespective of the sharp practices and unethical work practices of competitors in the business environment. However, there is perceived decline in work ethic, an evidence of this is well established in the integrity violations by many employees in our contemporary work organizations. Issues of fraud, theft, corruption, manipulation of information, misconduct, and the likes are well reported now. Notable scholars are of the opinion that to remain market a leader or become industry champion, ethical behavior must be institutionalized (Schminke, Arnaud and Kuenzi, 2015).

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