Historical Ethical Dilemmas
Abstracts
This paper looks into the ethical dilemmas in relation to organizational leadership in present corporate world. It presents unethical behaviors in the current workplace that involves behavior that go against set ethical standards. The paper also highlights the current nature of business ethics in relation to its development over the last 100 plus years. The 2007-2008 financial crisis is also presented as having largely been cause by people’s failing. Diversity and discrimination are important to leaders since the determine culture and success in an organization. Corporate outreach and company supported corporate programs are important since they involve caring for the public good and giving back to the community.
Current unethical behavior in the workplace
The current workplace is wrought with unethical behavior that goes against moral principles that serve as a guide in an organization. Such acts do no conform to the standards of set in the workplace and may be perpetrated by the managers or an individual employee. The common unethical behavior consists of misuse of organizational resources, theft of these resources, abusive behavior and dishonesty. Misuse of resources mostly occurs due to misappropriation of time where co-workers conduct their personal business when they should be working (Askew, Beisler, & Keel, 2015). An example involve conducting freelance business using firm’s resources and during company’s time. This also involves violation of internet policies of the organization so that Cyber-slackers and Cyber-loafers become common, and these comprises of people surfing internet rather than working. Many workplaces have some leaders who use their authority or position to mistreat their juniors. Unless such situations involve gender, races and ethnic origin little or no legal protection is offered against such practices. Theft of organizational resources is also common at the workplace , where employees check tamper , fail to keep accurate sales record so or even manipulate figures such as expense reimbursements for personal gain Askew, Beisler, & Keel, 2015). Dishonesty is also a common unethical behavior which is perpetrated by employers, managers and employees (Askew, Beisler, & Keel, 2015). This leads to lack of trust among members of an organization, an important aspect in good organizational culture.
To minimize unethical behavior, leaders should put in place an ethical policy that focuses on effective communication, accountability and transparency. The leaders should set an example to be followed in the organization, and then reinforce behaviors that will encourage upholding of ethical policy. The leadership should also focus on educating and coaching the desired behaviors, and demonstrate critical behavior that indicates being ethical (Bonner, Greenbaum & Mayer, 2016). The various ethical practices that can be employed to encourage ethics include setting value statements, discussing ethics while reviewing performance, making as part of requirement in hiring process and retaining employees who have shown ethical behavior. Leaders should also focus on sharing credit for success and letting the employees know that honest is important (Bonner, Greenbaum & Mayer, 2016). The leadership should ensure that they review organization objectives and align them with policies to make sure that ethical performance is promoted all through.
Nature of ethics in current businesses
Over the least 100 years, the business practices have largely rose from exploitation to ethics, since the subject of ethics became more relevant as business rose in United States and globally. The rise of big firms in the early 20th century such as those dealing with oil exploration and drilling, real estate and finance led to more jobs but unfortunately, this created an exploitative environment for workers (Kaplan, 2014). These organizations became dominant in the economy and were able to infiltrate and influence the government so that big interests seemed to corrupt democracy. The burgeoning of other social issues brought about marginalization of workers indicated by poor working conditions and low wages. While corporate profits were driving growths in these businesses, some workers were being disfranchised which brought different reactions by workers in various countries (Kolk, 2016). As the businesses grew the public and public became more concerned and the need for regulating the activities organization became prominent. Thus, public awareness, government regulation, unionization of labor and the rise of corporate social responsibility in the corporate world can be credited with the evolution and adoption of ethical standards.
For some years, an attack on corporate interests was mostly written off as a sustained attack on communist ideology, and thus served to promote the connection between businesses and governments. The public later acceptance of ignoring business ethics for the sake of capitalism dwindled, and with advancement in technology and increased requirement for specialized labor, the need for corporations-employee direct interaction increased (Galbraith, 2017). This came with adoption of ethical standards. The rise of labor unions brought the need for improved ethical working conditions and the businesses implemented more policies to hold workers accountable. The government adopted regulations aimed at controlling negative impacts of corporation’s operations. The increase in stock market was shifting the corporate leadership role from “stakeholder” model, where emphasis was on employees and customers to shareholder model, where a firm is expected to have a continuous growth in profits and stock. While the notion of shareholder being always right promotes competition it presents the risk of upholding business ethics (Kolk, 2016). This presents opportunities for managers in organizations and employees to sacrifice ethics for the sake of performance. However, various corporate scandals such Enron Scandals has led to more regulation, calls for observing ethical standards and even prosecution. Policies on social responsibility have involved ensuring that social businesses are conscious to social concerns arising from their operations. These have largely improved the ethical standing of businesses.
Ethics and 2007-2008 financial crisis
The 2007-2008 financial meltdowns can largely be attributing to people failure, and not so much on the capital market process. Basically, the case of failure in free market capitalization was brought by decisions made by the people in corporate managerial positions and in the government. The disruptive manipulation by the Federal Reserves in terms of interest rates, large subsidies, and even regulations in various sectors including banking, mortgages and housing was a critical contributing factor to the crises (Salsman, 2013). The government had promoted various financial practices that can be considered reckless and morally hazardous, and the situation was made bad by various bail outs of bad scoundrels in managerial positions. The genesis of the problem can be traced to the adoption of a kind of policy that appeared to enshrine need over human and corporate greed. While such policies had good intentions, they subsidized greed which eventually afflicted everybody. The policy favoritism and priority were given to people mostly needed homes which they could not afford and even loans that they were could not be able to pay (Salsman, 2013). Such kind of approach could not work in a free and rational marker, but was exploited by individuals who were backed by others persons’ money. Such money came from government institutions which mean that the individuals in these offices and not the free-market institutions should carry the blame. Politicians who were under the pay of organization such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were responsible for policies that triggered the 2008 mortgage crisis. Their practices were shrouded in incompetence, lack of transparency and accountability (Salsman, 2013). In fact, recent studies have shown that the constant mistrust in Wall Street in the years after the crisis is an indication of underlying misgiving by the public about the financial sector practices (Argandoña, 2012). The conclusion that most of the firms were not concern with the economy’s well-being or ethical goes a long way to attribute the melt-own to human failure.
There was a laxity monetary policy in US that allowed high debt and assets overvaluation which resulted to the crisis. The crisis was reproduced across Europe since the European Central Bank that had similar lax policy. The ethical crisis in this situation can be discussed in three perspectives including individual moral failings, failings at the organizational level and at the theoretical and social ethics. At the individual level the, the excessive selfish desire for profit became a hindrance to the appropriate professional conduct so that some managers who were aware of the crisis went ahead to make decisions that they thought would favor their career (Miller, 2009). They were willing to ignore the set professional conduct. Some professionals including economists, the government and financiers arrogantly believed their skills and knowledge did not warrant the supervision of others which led to lack of restraint (Miller, 2009). There were many misleading advertising, unnecessary manipulation of operations for the sake of higher commissions and withholding information. The bankers ignored prudence, an important virtue in upholding ethical standards (Miller, 2009). At the organizational level, the crisis can be seen as failure in governance or leadership among the banks, rating agencies, central banks and other government agencies. Young and inexperienced professionals were entrusted with making decisions involving asset analysis, buying and selling. The superiors did not care to know their actions which mean that they failed in their oversight responsibility (Crotty, & Epstein, 2008). This indicates a personal ethical failure that led to the financial melt-down.
Diversity and discrimination
The notion of diversity consists of respect and acceptance, based on the fact that everybody in the organization is unique. Diversity is an important aspect that any leader who is seeking to entrench ethical culture must understand so at to recognize the differences among individuals. It involves some conscious practices where leaders have to understand and appreciate that humans, their cultures and natural environment are interdependent (Patrick & Kumar, 2012). It means that people must practice mutual respect in terms of experiences and qualities that are dissimilar to theirs. Appreciating diversity at the workplace will make people from different socio-economic backgrounds to be confortable while working in a given organization(Patrick & Kumar, 2012). It involves facilitating equal opportunities for all employees and even potential employees so that rewards and promotions are not based on gender, race or creed but purely on merit. Organizations will benefit from promoting tolerance among the workers so that they can embrace differences in other people (Patrick & Kumar, 2012). This will open up new horizons with various customer demographics, methods of internal performance and even business partners.
Discrimination is among the major ethical considerations that leaders have to encounter in an organization. Discrimination relates to diversity in that appreciating diversity will ensure that no discrimination is meted on an individual on the basis of their uniqueness. Institutionalized discrimination results in sustained privileges for some people and creation of sustained disadvantages for other people (Ferrell, 2016). Leaders have to cultivate a culture that abhors discrimination which will go a long way in building cooperation across differences so that people can work together in eradication of any kind of discrimination (Ferrell, 2016). Leaders have to ensure that equality is promoted in their organization and this means that the best competences are exploited.
Corporate outreach and company supported corporate programs
Corporate outreach and volunteer programs supported by a company are important for organizations that want to contribute towards the wellbeing of the community in which they operate. The idea of Company sponsored volunteer programs is valuable in ethical terms since the company acts as the vehicle for improving the society (Madison, Ward & Royalty, 2012). It would be unethical for a firm to ignore the issues affecting the society or the general public good. For example, company should show genuine interest in and support things valued by employees since they are members of the community and thus, they desire to reflect important values to other members. By sponsoring the volunteer programs, the organization will be supporting a cause that is highly valued by employees (Madison, Ward & Royalty, 2012). The programs enable the organizations to constantly commit themselves to some shared values that will ensure that their interests are aligned with public good. Corporate outreach is important since it involves giving back to the community and also comes with public relations benefits (Rochlin, Coutsoukis & Carbone, 2001).It makes it possible to change general relationship between an organization and consumers since the firm is involved in a cause that benefits the community.
Conclusion
The current workplace is wrought with unethical behavior that goes against moral principles set in workplace and professional standards. Businesses have evolved to be more ethical with time, as the society become more open. The 2007- 2008 financial melt-down can largely be attributed to human failures that affected domestic and global capital market. Discrimination relates to diversity in that appreciating diversity will ensure that no discrimination is meted on an individual on the basis of their uniqueness. Corporate outreach and company supported corporate programs should be embraced because they help in improving a company’s public relations.
References
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