In your first Learning Activity for week 1 you discussed some things that come t
ID: 378870 • Letter: I
Question
In your first Learning Activity for week 1 you discussed some things that come to mind when you think of the word “ethics”. Over the course of the past 8 weeks, has your view or conception of ethics changed in any way? If yes, is there a specific moment you can identify and describe that triggered the change (a reading(s), or posting(s), discussion(s) with colleague(s) for example)? If your view or conception did not change, why do you think this is the case? How can what you learned in the course be applied in your professional and/or personal life?
Explanation / Answer
Over the course of the past 8 weeks, I realized that people do care of being ethical in business now. With the passing of time, the concept of social responsibility in business ethics has gathered momentum, once the basic survival concept of the businesses stabilized. As a matter of fact, today's society has increasing expectations about corporate social responsibility. Also, today's diverse workforce brings a wide variety of values and morals to the workplace. The social responsibility in today’s era, have spread its wings to include the broader concept of ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’. This concept is much wider than what Milton Friedman suggested in 1962 and is also included in the overall concept of the Managerial Ethics theory that can be categorized into three essential parts:
The Social Responsibility of the Corporate is now a scientific approach of Organizational duties towards the larger benefits of the society. Its emergence has been due to
Ø Growth in size of corporate enterprises
Ø Education and impact of business activities in society
Ø Claims made by Companies on society
Most of the mature management has started realizing that only socially responsible behavior can work towards building favorable public opinion. It is not that they are altruistic - not because they are interested in public relations. The managers have to face a dilemma of where to draw a line.
We have an anomaly of economic analysis as an only reliable way versus over concentration of profits which has led to a number of examples of no consideration to:
- Environmental health
- Worker safety
- Consumer interests and other side issues.
Therefore, the Professionals find the doctrine of social responsibility as incompatible in a free society. In a free society, a corporate executive is an employee of the Firm’s owners. He has direct responsibility to his employers. Hence, everywhere in Business, ethics and social responsibility, do play a significant role.
Further what changed my perception is that:
§ What is ethical can no longer be determined by your gut feeling, your conscience. Like guilty feelings these intuitions may tell us that something is wrong but not necessarily what is right.
§ What is ethical cannot be brought down from a mountain top carved in tablets of stone.
Ethical standards, whether formal or informal have changed considerably. We cannot say that Ethical Standards have fallen or that the society has drifted. It is the reverse - - the issue is not just having the standards but living up to them.
§ Business corporations of today are much bigger than in the past and the impact of their operations on the society is much larger.
§ Good potential for thoughtless actions – long term consequences.
§ Scope of operations of organizations has widened.
§ A greater lot of the population is victim of bad actions by relatively few with disastrous consequence.
§ Ethics as a subject has been introduced in management curriculum in Harvard in 1907.
§ Ethical issues occur frequently in management.
§ They extend beyond the concepts of crime and include the areas of Corporate activities such as capital investments and policy making.
§ “Right”, “Proper” and “Fair” can help to judge the people’s behavior which is just .
§ Moral standards are subjective because the values upon which they are based differ.
§ No one can say which certainty that a given moral standard is correct or incorrect provided it can be shown that the standard truly does express an obligation to others, and not just a benefit for us.
On the other side, some rules and frames that are formulated by the law is termed as legal. There are many cases where the law coincides with the Business ethics or ethical behavior of Organizations or individuals for e.g., in case of Business ethics, Corporate Governance is about maximizing value subject to meeting the corporation’s financial and other legal and contractual obligations. It is the need for board of directors to balance the interests of shareholders with those of other stakeholders in order to achieve long-term sustained value. It is about nurturing enterprise while ensuring accountability in the exercise of power and patronage by firms.
Upon my further reflection to ethics, I understood that there are two sides of a sheet of paper:
Business side: sales, profits, market share
Ethical side: human feelings of satisfaction, relative fairness, long term consequences for society and environment.
Hence when the topic of business ethics comes up, people are quick to speak of the Golden Rule, honesty and courtesy. These are our basic minimum requirements of Ethical policy in the Organization. Hence, apart from doing the greater good to the people, ethics is indeed all about not lying and cheating, though it is wider concept and includes many more activities within it which goes beyond mere ‘Not lying or cheating’.
If people do it, so should I, provided it is ethically right. Following a herd’s mentality may possibly make us fall someday in the business along with lot many other people who resort to malpractices.
However, few shortcomings of the same would be:
By being a learner, the values so learned could help me as a manager to recognize the ethical dilemmas and become aware of ethical issues related to my actions. It shall further reaffirm the organization’s expectation that managers will act ethically. To the manager, hence, the learning shall help improving myself as the manager, to discover new possibilities in the following ways:
– Making general human resource decisions.
• Promotions, transfers, and terminations
– Identifying training and development needs.
• Employee skills and competencies
– Validating selection and development programs.
• Employee performance compared to selection evaluation and anticipated performance results of participation in training.
– Providing feedback to employees.
• The organization’s view of their current performance
– Supplying the basis for rewards allocation decisions.
• Merit pay increases and other rewards
All these activities shall help me to get a willing support from its subordinates, thereby helping me to perform better in the industry in search of new opportunities, which in turn would be responsible in keeping all types of stakeholders happy and content. Such a behavior shall form an intrinsic part of business gains. Learning shall also help me in rethinking and redesigning the organizational processes to produce more uniform products and services.