Biz Ethics: Week Two Respond

Topic One: Please respond to all Four below

1. (Brit)

Leading by example is a perfect way to positively impact an organization. If a top-level manager expects his or her team to show up to work on time every day, but then does the opposite, their employees will not put forth the effort and think it really doesn’t matter. I have worked for companies that try to enforce policies that they themselves do not even follow. It leads to a lack of respect and introduces new hires to bad habits from the beginning.

2. (Monica)

Our textbook by Ferrell et al. states "Corporate Culture is 'the shared beliefs top managers in a company have about how they should manage themselves and other employees, and how they should conduct their business(es)'" (2019, p.165). This statement shows how influential leaders' actions are. I believe that this is why the most ethical person should be the person with the most power/influence. While it is not that every single person who witnesses unethical behavior will follow suit, in being given the example, there will be some people who feel like they have been given permission to follow in their unethical footsteps. This is done through Teleology and Egoism (Ferrell et al., 2019, p.141).

3. (Ashley)

The moral philosophy relativism it's defined as ethical behavior that is derived subjectively from the experiences of individuals and groups. More specifically relativists use themselves or the people around them as their basis for defining ethical standards. This is something that my organization uses specially when attempting to create an organizational culture that is inclusive of all staff and their personal experiences or cultural norms. There have been situations where they have attempted to create policies or procedures within the organization that are ethical in general, but when they take a closer look at each individual staff member and their personal cultural norms, they realize that it may in fact not be and ethical. Therefore, it leads to a change in this policy to ensure that it is ethical in relation to the norms and customs experienced by staff personally and not just ethical in general.

4. (Jonathan)

In my opinion, the most important is the first step of understanding and admitting that an ethical issue exists. This would fall under the ethical issue intensity. Like many other organizations, the one I work for has a policy where whistleblowers will not be hunted down or punished, and then upper management reviews the issue/s, and then next steps can be taken. I also believe my company does a good job of setting up organizational factors in the means of a positive corporate culture. We don’t do as far as learning the history and traditions like that of Disney, but we do enough training to understand when we are faced with difficult decisions.