Different organizations have their very own customized code of conduct that is used to guide the various behaviors and values of employees and how things are to be done. Despite ethics being well established, there are always challenges as to how to observe them. In some situations, bending an ethic would be for the benefit of an organization which would pose a question as to whether it is advisable or not. Some organizations and employees, however, do not observe their set of ethics knowingly which in the long run affects the organizations adversely. Enron, for example, had been corrupting its ethics for a long time to hide its bankruptcy. Enron’s accounting disclosure and transparency was at fault and the abuse going around its audits was purely unethical as the officials tried to hide the wrongdoings going around their financial statements.
To evaluate more on ethical considerations within a business, the company Verizon Communications was analyzed. Verizon is a telecommunication company that deals in global innovations and communication technologies. Their overall code of conduct is for all its employees to use their judgment in the most applicable way to be responsible and own up to their actions and ensure the business is done with a lot of integrity (Verizon, 2017). It also ensures fairness and integrity is observed in the workplace, the work environment as well as in the market when competing with its rivals. Despite the well-established code of conduct, the company has been faced with challenges that led to its ethical standards being questioned. A couple of its scandals have been exposed. The National Security Agency asked Verizon to give them permission to have access to phone calls among the US citizens as a measure to help curb terrorism where through the kind of conversation people were having, NSA would be able to detect the kind of persons they were. The Government only allowed them to have the liberty to monitor the calls as opposed to their request where they wanted permission to listen to people’s conversations. It would be able to monitor the location, phone number and time duration of the calls. To do that, the government was offering Verizon a good amount of cash which the company did take, and it was not to disclose any information towards its customers about the deal which unluckily was exposed.
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The company was not being transparent to its customers as they were not aware of their conversations being monitored. Their freedom of speech, association, and privacy had been invaded unknowingly. From the scandal, the challenges were broken down into three theories: individualism, utilitarianism, Kantianism and the virtue theory (Lyesiuk, 2014). Individualism came in where Verizon decided to enter into an agreement with NSA to maximize their profits without having to think about what the customers would think about the idea of their conversations being monitored. Utilitarianism is meant to make customers satisfied and happy about the services they are being offered, and Verizon breached this codes. When the customers came to the realization of the call monitors, they were not pleased with the government.
Kantianism, on the other hand, emphasizes making decisions that are not self-appraising when more than one parties are involved. Verizon only thought about their self-interests and did not think about their customer’s welfare and take in the issue. Lastly, the virtue theory encompasses four main components: honesty, fairness, self-control, and courage. Verizon breached honesty by hiding the deal with the government from its customers. It failed courage by not being able to stand against the government which was violating its customer’s rights. It ignored self-control by being enticed to go against its customers for self-interests and finally it was not fair in how it did to its customers by enabling another party to have access to their information (Lyesiuk, 2014).
Despite the challenges it faced, Verizon was able to be successful in that it made huge profits and had the full support of the government. Leadership played a big part of the success as the officials were responsible for making the deals with the government and making sure none of the information leaked to the public. To respond to the above challenges, Verizon came up with a strategy to blame the government as having forced the company to give in to the deal as a way of protecting its assets which would have been freeze if it did not collaborate (Greenfield, 2013). The strategy seemed to work since the company was siding with its customers.
References
Greenfield, R. (2013). Verizon wants you to blame the government — and it's working. The Atlantic . Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/verizon-nsa-response/314517/
Lyesiuk, S. (2014). Verizon Wireless: NSA spotlight (2013). Retrieved from http://businessethicscases.blogspot.com/2014/02/verizon-wireless-can-you-hear-me-now.html
Verizon. (2017). Our code of conduct . Retrieved from https://www.verizon.com/about/sites/default/files/Verizon-Code-of-Conduct.pdf
