BUSINESS ETHICS

Week 8 Assignment

Business Ethics

WEEK 8

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Considering this industry or business, what are some of the ethical or corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues that you believe warrant/permit greatest attention on the part of organizational leaders?

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) helps to promote a vision of the company’s accountability to a large of shareholders apart from investors and stakeholders. Major areas of concern are ecological protection as well as welfare of the staffs, the civil society and community in overall both currently and in future. the idea of CSR is underpinned by the concept that companies cannot be able to act as separate entities functioning in detachment from wider society. Conventional views about profitability, survival and competitiveness are being eradicated (IISD, 2013). Some of the issues that warrant greatest attention of the part of organizational leaders are described as follows.

The declining of the government. Previously, governments have depended on rules and regulation to deliver environmental and social objectives in business segment. Dwindling government resources as well as mistrust and skepticism of rules, has caused an exploration of non-regulatory and voluntary initiatives (IISD, 2013). This issue is important because it encourages the companies to take responsibility of their environmental and social impact to the surrounding community.

Demands for greater revelation. The demand has been growing over the company disclosure from stakeholders including activities of the organizations, investors, communities, suppliers and customers. This issue is important because it helps the environmental experts to measure the impact of the firm to the community.

Growing customers’’ interest. There is an evidence that ethical behavior of the firms exerts higher pressure on the buying decisions of consumers. In the recent survey by environics global around 5 consumers stated having either punished or rewarded firms on basis of their perceived social performance (IISD, 2013).

Growing pressure from the investor. The stakeholders are changing the way they evaluate the firms’ performance and making decisions on basis of criteria that encompass ethical concerns. The societal investment forum states that in the US in the year 1999, there was around $2 trillion worth assets invested in collections that used screens connected to the social responsibility and environment. This is important because it allows the investors to budget for extra costs to cater for the social responsibility.

Competitive labor markets. Workers are gradually looking yonder benefits and salaries, and trying to seek out employers whose operating practices and ideas match their own ideologies. This is important because in order to recruit and retain skilled staffs, firms are being compelled to enhance working conditions.

Supplier relations. As stakeholders become gradually interested in the affairs of the business, several firms are taking necessary steps to make sure their partners carry out themselves in a sociable and responsible way (IISD, 2013). This issue is important because some companies are introducing ethical standards for the suppliers, to make sure that other firms’ practices and policies do not tarnish their repute.

Practical approaches that leaders might take to achieve more ethically responsible performance in these areas

There are several practical approaches that leaders may take to attain more ethically responsible performance in the aforementioned issues. First is to lead by example, leaders should model the behavioral standards they expect staffs to follow. To exemplify their firm’s ethics, leaders can focus on creating ethical standards, recruit with much focus on ethical conduct, refer worker to department of compliance, reward ethical conduct at the place of work, promote only staffs who show ethical conduct and communicate the significance of ethics through employee meetings and frequent emails (Plante, 2015). Leaders that act ethically set the positive tone at their firm and similarly reap extra benefits. For instance, when Intel company made a decision to stop sourcing raw materials from conflict zones, it was not devoid of cost. However, the right thing to do the decision earned positive responses from activists, consumers and permitted the microchip manufacturer to secure more sustainable supply chain. Making sure the capacity to source from many states of the globe was good thing.

Ethical reputation assists the firms to attract and retain quality workers. These persons then foster and grow a work culture that is established on shared values. Job seekers frequently choose the corporation whose ethics align with theirs, specifically in fields with little variance in job description. Ethical leadership produces a trickle-down impact that attract and retain the best staffs, develop a status for sound ethics, and execute more workable practices.

Leaders should provide resources that effectively strengthen ethics. Training and workshops help the leaders and workers to identify ethical dilemmas, however, these resources usually fail to grasp the reality of several ethical violations. The most repeated and common predicaments to be relational, full of grey areas and extra-legal like compromised conflicts or loyalties of interest in times of change and growth, ignoring cross-cultural values after globalization, pressures or incentives to expand achievement targets (Plante, 2015). Resources that continuously encourage ethics are the most effectual unlike one-off events and trainings. Some of the other resources that effectually encourage ethics include approachable HR departments that stress what is ethical and not legal, onboarding packages for new hires that stress the significance of ethics. Ethics are best part of the firms whose workplace succeed due to integrity and values within.

A leader should reinforce the behavior needed. ethical behavior should be clearly reinforced so that it continues to occur. Problematic unethical behavior must not be strengthened if the company wishes to eradicate some of these unwanted behaviors. Offering opportunities for awards, recognition as well as social supports for required ethical conduct can go a long way to enhance the kinds of ethical culture desired in any company (Plante, 2015). Certainly, these reinforcements or rewards should be thoroughly considered and delivered with cautious attention to both planned and inadvertent consequences of using them.

Ask employees to write an individual code. Ethical choices are made one individual at a time, one choice at a time. Compliance regulations and laws are usually geared toward larger transgressions, nevertheless, and can overlook small ethics breaches that can nonetheless damage the company’s image. Numerous ethical dilemmas are interpersonal, carry the possibility for repercussion and are thus difficult to circumnavigate. It is usually easy for staffs to do nothing as compared to make toughest decision (Plante, 2015). Being able to plan ahead helps to encourage follow through during the time staffs are faced with ethical dilemma. As a leader ask staff to keep personal ethical standards, a list of unethical things they will not do. Similarly prompt them to note down how they would respond to unethical circumstances that may arise at the place of work. For instance, ask the staff to keep some of the documents that specifies how they would respond to offers for unethical incentives, sexual harassment and request from the community to assist them in the ongoing project. If workers can note down ethical standards at hand, then they shall likely conduct themselves with integrity. Lastly, a staff with clear ethical standards have higher chances of expressing their views. Firms benefit when employees are honest, open and give critical feedback.

Why haven't leaders done this to date?

Based on this study and our collective experience of working with thousands of business leaders, there are a number of obstacles and contradictions we see most often impact the ability to act ethically:

The leaders have not done the aforementioned to this date due to the following reasons. Firstly, change management initiatives and business transformation programs. Firms normally change their own ethical environment by pushing a lot of change from the top, too regularly and too quickly. Focusing on executing staff reduction targets dispose large companies in key markets and lead to acquisitions and merger. Some of these practices include intrinsic conflict of interest; others just caused the managers to act in manner countering their values (loyalty for instance) (McLaverty & McKee, 2016). Several leaders in this case feel poorly prepared for the dilemmas they faced and felt pushed to take decisions they regret in future.

Secondly, pressure and incentives to inflate accomplishment of targets. Human beings do what they are awarded to do, and many leaders are awarded for hitting targets. However, the lure of inducements are challenges in boardrooms: executive share schemes and bonus payment are usually based on short-term business metrics, which counters long-term success (McLaverty & McKee, 2016).

Cross-cultural differences. Many leaders indicate how fast their businesses had spread globally in the past 10 years and how ethical concern can be deeply hard when operating across dissimilar cultures. They talked about how demanding it was to make decision whose cultural rules were paramount when making decisions of the business. While these challenges are major obstacles in making ethical decisions, they are not insurmountable (McLaverty & McKee, 2016).

Do you think higher performance in this area might produce higher profitability?

Business ethics in management. Organization’s leadership holds the key to longstanding success and remaining continuous with management philosophy built on the basis of ethics creates a positive example for all employees. Treatment of employees, ethical accounting practices, interaction with the community and dissemination of the information to shareholders are all duties of the leadership and directly affect the overall profitability of the company (Robins, 2015). Thus, higher performance in ethics and social responsibility might produce high profits.

Business ethics and worker morale. There is an evidence that time and again staffs who are satisfied with the atmosphere in which they operate are more productive as compared to unhappy workers. Practices deemed unethical in at the place of work can cause prevalent turbulence with workers, leading to a greater sense of displeasure with the job and their employers (Horton, 2019). Nevertheless, when the company encourages business ethics from administration and company directors lead by example, the capability of workers to concentrate on the job they need to finish to make themselves and the firm profitable upsurges exponentially. Production upsurges when there are few distractions and morale is high leads to greater profit levels for the corporation.

References

Horton, M. (2019, June 25). Are Business Ethics Important for Profitability? Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040715/how-important-are-business-ethics-running-profitable-business.asp

IISD. (2013). Corporate social responsibility (CSR). Retrieved from https://www.iisd.org/business/issues/sr.aspx

McLaverty, C., & McKee, A. (2016, December 29). What You Can Do to Improve Ethics at Your Company. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/12/what-you-can-do-to-improve-ethics-at-your-company

Plante, T. (2015, July 1). Six Ways to Create a Culture of Ethics in Any Organization. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the-right-thing/201507/six-ways-create-culture-ethics-in-any-organization

Robins, R. (2015, May 5). Does Corporate Social Responsibility Increase Profits? Retrieved from https://business-ethics.com/2015/05/05/does-corporate-social-responsibility-increase-profits/