Abstract
Ethical dilemmas are most common in business environments, probably more than any other field. The paper provides the ethical issues that are common in workplaces today. the issues include employee theft, lying to employees, violating company internet rules, and employer’s abusive behaviors. It also provides ways in which these dilemmas can be curbed in an organization through strict policies and regulations. There are also the benefits of volunteering programs across organizations and include improved collaboration, self-awareness, and customer attraction. Diversity and discrimination have proved to be the major ethical issues in organizations, and therefore, company managers and organizations should possess regulations for the proper management of the same.
What are some of the most common forms of unethical behavior in our workforce today? How could leadership in organizations help to minimize this ethical misconduct? Explain and support your positions with relevant course content and outside sources .
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Some of the most common forms of unethical behaviors in our workforce today includes:
Abusive Behavior. Today, many workplaces are filled with leaders who use their position and power to mistreat others. Abusive behavior is considered unethical regardless of any form that it takes. Unfortunately, unless the situation involves race, gender, or ethnic origin, there is often little to no legal protection against abusive behavior in the workplace.
Misuse of company time. This could be trying to cover up for someone who comes to work late or using the time for work doing other unproductive things that are totally outside the organization. This category includes knowing a co-worker is conducting personal business on company time. From the survey, Personal Business recognizes the difference between making unnecessary calls. For example, to advance your freelance business or even calling a spouse to find out how your sick child is doing. This is a misuse of company time that could be used to improve the company is highly unethical.
Lying to Employees. One of the fastest ways to lose the trust of your employees is continually lying to them. Employees are good at keeping records of lies. If you can ask them about something you promised them years ago, their responses will surprise you. Lying is unethical and is not expected from any leader or manager.
Employee Theft. Theft can come in in forms of check tampering, not recording sales to skim, or manipulating expense reimbursements mostly by the accounts office. Employee theft is a crime and unethical.
Violating Company Internet Policies. This is usually done by the Cyber slackers and the Cyber loafers. These are terms used to identify people who surf the internet when they should be working. This is a huge, multi-billion-dollar problem for companies. Checking your Facebook and Twitter accounts when you are supposed to be working is not in order, and it always results in wastage of working time. Violating company Internet policies is unethical.
Leadership in respective organizations can help to minimize unethical misconducts by taking up specific actions. They include leading by examples. Employees usually look up to their leaders for direction and pick how they carry themselves. Managers and organization leaders are, therefore expected to make ethics-based decisions for the sake of their employees. (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015).
They are also expected to create a written code of conduct. Managers and the employees should get access to the specific types of behavior and conduct that is expected by the company. The outline provides the unacceptable behaviors together with the acceptable ones and punitive measures in case one violates them.
Another important thing that leaders can do is to show appreciation to their employees. The act of appreciating employees gives them the morale to work hard and stay loyal. They feel that the organization values them, and a satisfied, loyal employee is not likely to act against the company's code of ethics. A manager, therefore, is encouraged to show appreciation to their workers to foster loyalty. They can also give hem bonuses and more days off the job to reward the excellent work that they have done.
As our businesses have developed over the last 100 plus years, have our modern day businesses evolved to be more ethical today? What are some of the factors that helped you come to your conclusion? Take a position and support your thoughts .
As the businesses develop over the years, business ethics are observed to have advanced and is now on an upward trajectory where they are increasingly built in organizations. They are regularly checked and balanced to ensure that they are appropriately embedded and upheld by the adequate regulations and suitable environment.
There have been observable changes in terms of the relationship between the employer and the employees, social responsibilities, environmental issues, discrimination and bribery, and insider trading. The business ethics in the 60s were faced with a wave of changes, including the shift in cultural values and serious dedication to social issues and individualism. The young workers became more idealistic, and the employers rated their work as more ethical than that of the previous years. Since they were working to ensure that they make the world a better place, they focused on individualism, which guided them to look up to their employers with disdain. In response to the changes, the businesses began to embrace social responsibility.
In the 70s and 80s, the government, due to the defense contractor scandal during the Vietnam War, implemented strict policies governing defense contractors and in response, employees focused on values rather than rigid compliance. The 90s was characterized by environmentalism, where social responsibility was heightened. The manufactures of junk foods and tobacco companies faced a lot of scrutinies. Public health became a primary concern, and businesses were forced to spend more resources on their legal departments.
From 2000 to date, business ethics have been manifested more on the online realm. The main ethical issues are privacy issues and cybercrimes, including identity theft. Therefore, businesses face a lot of pressure to take up social and legal measures to protect their customer's private information. The knowledge of data mining has forced companies to use their online activities to gather valuable marketing data.
3. Would you describe the financial meltdown in our 2007-2008 financial markets as a failure of “people” or of our “capital market processes”? Why? Support your thoughts with ethical theory and examples. Use our library for added research if needed.
The 2007-2008 financial meltdown was due to the failure of people, which resulted in the hampering of the capital market processes and the economy at large. The crisis took place in the 2003-2004 years when the housing of the United States was booming. This was when the people's borrowing capacity was immensely increased, and the consequent lending capacity of banks increased to cater for the needs of the people. Things changed and reversed in the 2007-2008 years since the repayment of the bank loans went down and nearly stopped completely.
The result of this was the enormous losses of the balance sheets of the banks and gradually resulted in the country's financial crisis. In simple terms, the crises took place because of the increase in the lending capacity for mortgages and decreased or fewer repayments to the bank. This caused panics to other associated banks, including the Federal Reserve Bank and further resulted in the loss of bank balance sheets. 4. Tell me about why diversity and discrimination are two important ethical factors that leaders should focus on while attempting to manage their workforce? Provide one example of how mismanaging these issues have had an impact on an organization. How would you explain the importance of these to your employees?
Diversity and discrimination are among the most critical ethical factors that leaders should focus on when attempting to manage their workforce. This is due to their immense impact on the productivity and the general performance of an organization. The fact that diversity management is the core item for innovation through the nature of diverse cultures coming together. Diverse workforce presents a wide base of different cultural experiences that drives people to be innovative.
Diversity management serves to attract the various talents and customers to the organization as it is evident in the premier industries where it targets and prefers working in a more diverse environment. The customers have also shown interests in buying services from various companies.
In the same way, discrimination management is another ethical factor in a company. It is essential to implement proper policies that safeguard the implementation of the strict strategies to hinder discrimination in the hiring of employees, promoting and hiring them. This helps in attracting and retaining skillful and talented employees in the organization. Discrimination management, in addition, prevents the organization from being taken up and sued by the employees feeling that they have been discriminated against for some reasons.
In the case of mismanagement of diversity and discrimination, many negative impacts face the company. Take an instance where there is no diversity management in a company. It means the company management values less the diversity of their employees. Additionally, in some other case, they dislike diversity as they hire people from the same culture and believes. This results in a lack of knowledge about the beauty of diversity, and therefore, there is less or no innovation in that company (Breakey, & Sampford, 2017). A company without innovation and extension remains stagnant and lags in terms of development. Those companies are less productive compared companies that embrace diversity and value the difference among people and their cultures across the world.
Also, a company that does not exercise discrimination management faces a lot of challenges when it comes to employee's management. The employees are given rights to report any incident or attempt of discrimination to the concerned law takers. Such a company, therefore, will be prone to lawsuit cases from the furious employees who feel discriminated against for hiring and promotions.
It is, therefore, imperative to stress the importance of diversity and discrimination management in an organization for innovation, law compliance, and the productivity of the company at large. This will ensure that the company achieves its goals and objectives alongside following the law. 5. Are corporate outreach and company sponsored volunteer programs a good idea for organizations to implement? Why? From an ethical leadership perspective, why would you choose OR not choose to implement these programs? Use course theory and specific examples to support your conclusion.
Corporate outreach and company sponsored volunteer programs are a good idea for organizations to implement. The reason is, the programs offer positive impacts on the business environment. The economy of a country also benefits. The programs work to make sure that the business captures as many customers as possible and retains them to ensure the growth of the business.
One of the main reason why they are a good idea is that it improves collaboration. It fosters collaboration between the team members through the physical meetings that they hold. It is also true that when an office is open to many goal-oriented people, there will be more collaboration than those that are closed to external investors (Sanzo et al., 2015). Collaboration is improved in an environment where people trust each other and are willing to strengthen their trust through volunteer opportunities. The programs also provide better self-awareness and improve the participants working experience. Through the participation of the millennials in the corporate outreaches, they get to enjoy their work more
As for the ethical leadership point of view, I would excitedly choose to implement these programs. This is because according to the corporate responsibility manager at Digital enterprises, it is not very promising to provide proper pay to the employees. It is advisable to include paid volunteer programs that will give you hints about your potential competitors. They also promote the aspect of team-building as well as creating a good image for the organizations.
In conclusion, ethics are codes of conducts that should be adhered to achieve a specific goal. Businesses face ethical dilemmas every day, and therefore, proper measures should be put in place to take care of the various ethical issues within the organizations. Some of the most common ethical problems in business environments include time wastage, violation of internet rules, lying to employees, and employee theft. Moreover, managers should be more concerned about the concept of employee diversity and discrimination management.
References
Breakey, H., & Sampford, C. (2017). Employed professionals' ethical responsibilities in public service and private enterprise: Dilemma, priority and synthesis. UNSWLJ, 40, 262.
Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. (2015). Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases . Nelson Education.
Sanzo, M. J., Alvarez, L. I., Rey, M., & García, N. (2015). Business–nonprofit partnerships: a new form of collaboration in a corporate responsibility and social innovation context. Service Business , 9(4), 611-636.
