In United States of America people value things like comfort, wealth, importance, competition, etc which is expressed by the level of importance they assign to people coming from different walks of life. In U. S, for example, athletes are highly honored and respected. They are given high monetary payments. In comparison college professor receive a little less than the athletes. Now this behavior shows their thinking pattern. Because in U. S health and exercise is given a lot of importance in comparison to education and studies naturally their inclination is leaning more towards the athletes.
Such level of honor is shown by high wages given to professional athletes. However it is also pointed out by many researches that intangible honor is given to the professors which equals that of the athletes in many ways. Many people consider that an atheist shouldn’t become a president because to them the belief in GOD is a value in itself. Also it is customary to wear black on a mourning day. Now that is because black is related to sorrow in almost all the cultures. Relatively colorful or bright dresses are worn to show or express the happy feelings.
Also it is considered appropriate to apply religious feelings in time of happiness as well as in sorrows. Many times it happens that people participate in a cultural activity without having actual belief in it, just because there other members are participating they follow suit. This sheds light to the complex behavior of mankind to combine together a lot of cultures and then to extract those aspects which are considered important to them. By doing this a lot of new cultures come into being and usually new cultures are born in this way.
In case of a conflict arising in values among the group members a penalty can be meted out to the person who has resisted because values are considered very sacred and any opposition to them are immediately squashed out. This is done to prevent any damage to the sacred values and beliefs. Also it is done to stop others from following suit and bringing opposition of any sort. Originally business ethics pertains to organizations and corporations but it relates to others as well Example local communities and NGO’s.
It is usually the conflict of interests that leads to a breach in business ethics. Usually these conflicts are of a personal nature for example financial interests which causes a person to act in a way which is considered unethical. In them your own personal interests wins over your professional integrity. The top unethical behaviors in work environments are self dealing, accepting benefits, using employers property for personal usage, illegal usage of inside information, moon lighting, post employment and using influence in an unethical way.
All these mentioned behaviors have an adverse effect on the work environment and they are currently the top issues the organizations are facing where accepting benefits or bribery is the most common among them. Self dealing is the misuse of a governmental post in a way to secure a private contract for one’s own personal interests(Snoeyenbos, Almeder, & Humber, 1983). It includes using your post as an advantage to secure a job for someone in which you have personal interests. The second issue was accepting benefits or bribery in which gifts are taken in exchange of a job sender has an interest in.
Influence peddling is basically to use your influence to favor a party or a group. Using employer’s property for personal usage is also considered unethical. It includes stealing office supplies for personal usage. Using confidential information is yet another issue in ethics which has to be revised. It includes selling of important documents to competitors or outside people who would then use it illegally to harm the organization. It is done to gain financial interests usually. Moonlighting also known as outside employment is when you open up a business which is in direct competition to your current employer.
The person who starts the business can then use inside information to gain benefit for his own organization and in the process it would hurt his employer financially(Fisher & Lovell, 2006). The person can send clients to his own organization and can use company’s successful policies in his own organization thus cutting down his costs. The last issue to be discussed it the post-employment. In this case the person resigns from his current post and opens up his/her own practice in the vicinity. This causes an increase in the competition by the previous employer as one can use his previous influence to get more and more customers on his side.
The person can unethically use what he learned from his previous job to improve his business. Since he was the inside man he knows about the company’s strengths and weakness. He would then proceed to illegally use the weaknesses to his maximum advantage. In the above cases breaching of trust was the main factor which was common in all unethical issues. Employers can control these unethical behaviors by keeping a monitoring check on its employees activities and not to trust more than it is requires.
Also by regularly dialoging with the employees can go a long way in stopping the unethical behaviors. By talking with them the employers are trying to befriend them so as to not lead to any unpleasant scenarios later on. Also by proper contracts, which would stop the employees from using their positions unethical, this issue can b resolved(May, Cheney & Roper, 2007). However for complete eradication of this social evil the organizations should let their employees be trained in managerial ethics and should give out rewards to the employees which have performed most ethically.
This would increase the level of competition in the employees to get the reward and public praising. The organization should be made aware that the more ethical they are the more profit they are going to be getting in future. Currently we see an increase in the level of interest corporations show to ethical behavior. Also the professors should teach the student ethics at university level with the help of case studies and related articles which would make them aware of the consequences of the unethical behavior(Shaw& Moral,1994).
The students should also be asked to make on the spot decisions relating to the case studies and other problems so as to check the depth of their understanding towards ethics and values. Some of the colleges have started taking their students in trips to visit the prison. Over there they meet those businesses people who went to jail because of their unethical behavior. By doing this the students are made aware that were unethical behavior leads to. Apart from that the organizations have a social responsibility to their customers to have a clean and ethical business environment.
Apart from ethical issues relating to inside work environment organizations should also focus on their social responsibilities like factories creating pollution problem for the people, throwing of toxic waste in waters and thus harming marine life. Also use of harmful ingredients in the food products should also be stopped by the organization because by using these food items the customers run a high risk of diseases and by this the organization would in turn be losing it profits in the future. Rather than being short term achievers the organizations should strive for better profits with healthy customers and unpolluted clean air and water.
Conclusion: In the above pages ethics and values have been broadly defined and their relationship to the organization profits has also been discussed in detail. Top five main issues which the organizations face daily are named, defined and described with various examples. This article talks about various ways in which organizations can overcome or at least minimize the bad impact of unethical behaviors. For this purpose some examples are also given which would further explain the point of view more clearly.
References
1. May, S. K. Cheney, G. & Roper, J. (2007). The Debate over Corporate Social Responsibility Oxford University Press. 2. Sims, R. R. (2003). Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility. Greenwood Publishing Group,. 3. Snoeyenbos, M. , Almeder, R. F. & Humber, J. M. (1983). Business Ethics: Corporate Values and Society. Prometheus Books. 4. Shaw, W. H. & Moral,B. V. (1994). Issues in Business. Wadsworth. 5. Fisher, C. , & Lovell, A. (2006). Business Ethics and Values: Individual, Corporate and International Perspectives. FT Prentice Hall.