What we as individuals consider ethical or unethical depends on our personal value systems, those fundamental concepts and motives in which we believe.

Corporate Values
In value statements most employers express what they regard as evidence of loyalty, expected behavior, or ethical practice. Organizational cultures encompass and reflect the values that guide an organization in its daily activities; that is, the sum total of all the ways people are expected to act in pursuing the goals and objectives of the organization. As work moves across departmental boundariesfor example, the flow of patients moving from admitting to a nursing unit, to radiology and backinevitable differences in values affect what is done and how and when things are done.
When corporations overall or individual supervisors or other members of management violate their own values, employees become cynical.
They remember what they have been told, and they talk of past promises that have been broken. They use such descriptors as unfair or double-talk, accusing management of talking the talk but not walking the walk.
Personal Values
What we as individuals consider ethical or unethical depends on our personal value systems, those fundamental concepts and motives in which we believe. Personal values concern what is important regarding work, for example, challenges, tasks, recognition, creativity, and authority. These values encompass relationships, personal finances, living and recreational activities, hobbies, and entertainment. Other values may include ambition and the desire for fame or the wish to have ones own enterprise. Attitudes continually reflect the core beliefs and values of individuals. Attitudes can change when beliefs and values change, but that happens neither easily nor often.
Authority
Authority possessed by an individual in the organizational hierarchy is formal power that is delegated; that is, passed on down the hierarchy to the point at which it is to be applied. Supervisors require authority to fulfill their responsibilities. It is axiomatic that people should not be given responsibilities without sufficient authority to completely fulfill those responsibilities and thus get the job done. Although authority is the power that makes a management job a reality, it can be relatively weak in its application. To be effectively applied, authority must be supplemented by other conditions or characteristics as follows:
Expertise; for example, licensure, certification, knowledge, skill, or experience
Credibility, as in being trusted and respected
Leadership skill, whether natural or acquired
Persuasiveness or charisma
Influence, sometimes as determined by whom one knows or is connected with
Ideally, the extent of a supervisors authority is expressed in the position description. Some of the more important activities over which supervisors possess variable amounts of authority fall into three categories: personnel administration, fiscal administration, and procedures. Personnel administration includes:
Selecting, orienting, and training new employees
Assigning or delegating to subordinates
Scheduling and approving overtime (although in some settings, overtime approval may reside with the supervisors manager)
Coaching, counseling, and disciplining employees
The tasks of fiscal administration include:
Selecting supplies or equipment or approving such purchases
Selecting vendors and establishing inventory levels
Participating at some level in budget preparation
The third category, procedures, involves:
Selecting or modifying methods or processes
Formulating departmental policies and rules and enforcing them
Participating in administrative activities (for example, quality management, safety, and education)
Unity of Command
The principle of unity of command originally meant that each employee reported to one and only one superior. However, matrix management arrangements, split-reporting relationships, and other complex organizational patterns have altered that concept. Presently, unity of command simply means that for each task that must be done, the employee who performs it is directly accountable to someone. From the first-line supervisors viewpoint, unity of command ordinarily represents a normal working arrangement under which every task that must be done is assigned to someone, and each person responsible for performing a specific task is accountable to the supervisor. This means that never, at any time, should there be cause for the departments employees to wonder: whose job is this?
Span of Control
In simplest terms, span of control, at times described as span of management, refers to the number of employees who report to a single leader. In practical terms, it is a reckoning of how many employees a single supervisor can effectively manage, how many the supervisor can keep track of and still provide the necessary supervisory attention.
Factors such as computers and autonomous work teams have led top management to expand spans of control and strip away layers of management. Organizational flattening, which often accompanies reengineerin

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