Contribution of Social Learning in Counterproductive Work Behaviors

Unethical employee behaviors pose a grave challenge for organizations today. Research has established that every year organizations lose millions of their dollars along with their valuable reputation due to immoral conduct of their employees. Practitioners and researchers in the past have undertook such instances very seriously and analyzed various antecedents to these employee behaviors. While various personality and attitude related variables have been held responsible for counterproductive work behaviors, the role of social learning was often overlooked in this pursuit. Current chapter address this gap and presents a logical framework for establishing social learning as potential antecedent of employee deviance in organizations.

Philosophical Grounding of Ethics Expertise

The chapter proposes to philosophically ground the ethics expertise in social work, starting from a series of ethics theories: utilitarian ethics, deontological ethics and ethics of virtues. During the foundation of ethics expertise we made conceptual distinctions between the theoretical and practical nature of expertise, between the ethical and the moral one, in order to justify the need for a new model of ethics expertise. In our approach, we debate the influence of such theories in the field of social services, which we consider to be representative in the context of the construction of a new model of ethics expertise, which underlies the constitutive values of social practice. The normativity of the ethical theories is extended to the level of certain different behavioural models and moral reasoning, summing up in practice the frameworks of the moral conduct the individuals can apply, when making an ethical decision, in social or organisational context, namely to determine whether the decision is morally acceptable or not.

A Brief Overview of Ethics Audit Practice in Organizations

This theoretical chapter presents the general issue of applying ethics audit to organizations. In the first part of the chapter are presented information about the origin of the term and several definitions of the ethics audit, which have been selected from the literature, the role and advantages of the ethics audit, the main characteristics, the principles, the content and implementing requirements of the ethics auditing process. The results of some research and good practices in the field are also mentioned. The second part of the chapter addresses the issues and particularities of ethics audit in social work field.

Ethical Dilemmas in Social Work Practice

Ethical dilemmas are conflicts that arise when two or more ethical principles clash. As social work practitioners often grapple with ethical dilemmas in their practice, it is important and informative to explore how they address them, especially in different cultural contexts. Drawing on data from a qualitative exploratory study of social work practitioners in different settings in Botswana, this chapter identifies and discusses several ethical dilemmas that social work practitioners in Botswana come across in their practice in both government and non-governmental organizations and how they address them. The chapter also examines the struggles practitioners deal with such as ethical stress, as they try to address and deal the ethical dilemmas. The chapter brings forth recommendations that social work ethics should be part of the educational curriculum and the importance of practitioners' self-awareness.

Strengths-Based Social Work

The strengths-based approach to the provision of social work services is said to rest on a respect for the worth and dignity of every individual and a concern that every individual be able to fulfill his or her potential. The strengths perspective transforms the role of the social worker role from that of an authority to that of a collaborator and seeks to facilitate client identification of internal and external strengths and resources and delineation of goals. Numerous criticisms have been raised about the approach, which has not been standardized in practice and has not been systematically evaluated through rigorous research to ascertain the effects of the approach or its acceptability to clients. As a consequence, numerous ethical issues are raised, including questions relating to client self-determination and informed consent. Additional research is needed to further evaluate the value of this perspective to client growth and development.

Ethical Grounding of Social Work Practices

Ethical awareness is fundamental to the professional practice of social workers. Their ability and commitment to act ethically is an essential aspect of the quality of the service offered to those who engage with social workers. Respect for human rights and a commitment to promoting social justice are at the core of social work practice throughout the world. Social work grew out of humanitarian and democratic ideals, and its values are based on respect for the equality, worth, and dignity of all people. Since its beginnings over a century ago, social work practice has focused on meeting human needs and developing human potential. Human rights and social justice serve as the motivation and justification for social work action. Therefore, this chapter included the ethical grounds in social work practices in a deep manner.

Social Work Between Individualism and Collectivism

The purpose of this chapter is to present several viewpoints concerning the way in which the individualism and collectivism as ideologies or ethic options meet, confront, and complete each other in the social work activity. We consider that a debate on this subject is all the more necessary in Romania at present time, when our country has transitioned, in the past few decades, from the communist collectivism to the market economy and democracy, namely to an economic and political system that intrinsically implies the predominance of the values of individualism. We aim at bringing some arguments in favour of the idea that, in social work, both the individualism and collectivism are not two antagonistic perspectives, that are not mutually exclusive but can coexist, and even complete each other. The social work contemporary systems are based on a different type of social solidarity, which does not exclude the individualism but integrate it as one of the fundamental values of social work.

Supervision of Ethics in Social Work Practice

The chapter aims at arguing the necessity and academic functioning of the supervision of ethics – as a model embodied in ethical expertise. Starting with 2012, the model of ethics expertise in the social welfare practice – the supervision of ethics – was continuously developed. Based on the previous approaches of supervision of ethics, the process is understood as having the following main functions: the Gatekeeping in construction of ethics policies, the mediation in achieving a reflective balance in the organization, the administrative and deliberative function, the construction of ethical climate in organizations and monitoring of ethical conformity and counselling of ethics, ethical advising and support. This model brings together practices from all other forms of ethics expertise, additionally exercising its gatekeeper role in the transfer of political theories on public good through the implementing programs and practices thereof, and making the professional values compatible with the organisational ones.

Social Justice in Social Work

The actuality of the given topic comes from the approach of the concept of social justice in relation with factors of decisions and power of the state. One of the solutions identified by the state organization is the creation of the system of social work, which represents a component of the national system of social protection, within which the state and civil society is engaged to prevent, limit or remove the temporary or permanent effects of some events considered as social risks that could generate the marginalization or exclusion of the persons and families in difficulty. In our vision, the social justice represents the equality of chances of each individual in relation with the equity and equality as fundamental principles of social coexistence. In a “healthy” state, any person, regardless of experience or life circumstances, succeeds to achieve the maximum potential. We believe that there is no human society that is entirely based on social equality or equity, but this is only an additional motive to make efforts in this direction.

The Role of the Core Moral Values in Social Work

We consider it appropriate to examine, within the social work act, under the new circumstances, the importance of other than traditional values which tend to become central, that human intervention relates to. In this particular context, tolerance, understood as a respect for different, but human lifestyles, and the empathy, as a way to meet real, not “presumed” expectations, of individuals and groups, have the ability to restructure the system of values of social work able to allow a different approach in order to achieve the human condition.