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- QUESTION
Competencies
3066.1.1 Ethical Issues in Business
The graduate analyzes ethical and socially responsible courses of action in a given business situation.
3066.1.2 Ethical Leadership
The graduate analyzes ethical considerations that shape business leadership.
3066.1.3 Employment Issues in Business
The graduate applies ethical principles to employment.
3066.1.4 Environmental Concerns in Business
The graduate applies ethical principles to environmental concerns confronting business.
3066.1.5 International Business
The graduate applies ethical principles to international business.
3066.1.6 Ethics Programs
The graduate evaluates ethical policies in a given business scenario.
Introduction
Task 2: Ethical Responsibilities
In a complex, multicultural business environment, it is important that business professionals adhere to ethical standards throughout their daily activities. The goal of this course is to introduce you to concepts and guidelines for ethical courses of actions in business. In order to assess your understanding of the material and your ability to apply the required concepts, you will be asked to take on the role of the ethics director for the company in the scenario. You will be asked to design an ethics curriculum for new employees to address the rights and responsibilities of employees and the ethical relationship between employer and employee. You will also be tasked with developing an ethical dilemma for analysis, offering ethical decisions for evaluation, and examining the role of personal values and goals in the workplace.
Scenario
You are the ethics officer of a marketing firm. The company prides itself on only engaging in ethical business practices. In order to ensure that all of its employees understand corporate ethical policy, new employees must attend an ethics training as part of the onboarding process. Additionally, every employee must attend an annual ethics training. These ethical training programs are developed by the marketing firm’s ethics officer (you), the marketing firm’s human resources (HR) director, and an outside consulting firm.
In a joint development session, the team works through the training development materials that will be presented at this year’s two-day ethics training session. This year, the focus is on two primary topics: employees’ rights and responsibilities in the workplace and employer’s ethical responsibilities toward employees. In addition, hypothetical ethical scenarios are developed to evaluate the employees’ understanding of company ethical standards, general ethical decision-making, and desired courses of action.
Requirements
Your submission must be your original work. No more than a combined total of 30% of the submission and no more than a 10% match to any one individual source can be directly quoted or closely paraphrased from sources, even if cited correctly. An originality report is provided when you submit your task that can be used as a guide.
You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.
- Take on the role of the ethics officer in the scenario and address the following:
- Describe three rights and responsibilities of employees based on the scenario.
- Evaluate two ethical responsibilities of the employer within the context of the employer/employee relationship described in the scenario.
- Develop one ethical business dilemma that can be used to demonstrate employee understanding of the company’s ethical standards.
- Evaluate the dilemma from part A3 from a utilitarian and relativistic perspective.
- Describe two common ethical decisions that reflect corporate ethics and responsibilities that employees can face while working in a corporate setting.
Note: These should be different from the ethical business dilemma in part A3.
- Explain why each ethical decision in part A5 presents an ethical dilemma and how an individual might justify unethical behavior (e.g., common excuses).
- Acknowledge sources, using in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.
- Demonstrate professional communication in the content and presentation of your submission.
| Subject | Business | Pages | 3 | Style | APA |
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Answer
Ethical Business Practices
Rights and Responsibilities of Employees
Employees, whether working part-time or fully employed, have responsibilities towards their employers which include responsibility to be committed to the work they are hired for, demonstrate care and competence while performing tasks and carefully follow employer’s instructions. Thomas (2015) confirms that employees must portray good moral conduct that demonstrate high business morals so as to foster and maintain noble employment relationships. Further, employees have rights to a healthy and safe work-life, complete protection against job discriminations or any sort of harassments and freedom to access and discuss information related to their terms and conditions of employment.
Ethical Responsibilities of the Employer
Maintaining an ethical workplace requires employers to observe certain ethical responsibilities. The two key ethical responsibilities include providing their employees with a safe and environmentally friendly working conditions and ensuring they adhere to the terms and conditions as outlined in the contract, especially in relations to wages, allowances and benefits such as vacations. According to Thomas (2015), employers have an obligation of providing their employers with a safe place to work and make sure that all employees are equally treated and protected from workplace discriminations.
Evaluating an Ethical Business Dilemma
Ethical business dilemmas are common in workplaces and most of the times, employees are conflicted on deciding which immediate action is the most appropriate to take. For instance, consider a dilemma whereby an employee identifies an ongoing harassment situation whereby a superior harasses another employee. The employee is aware that any sort of harassment either, physically, mentally or sexually is unethical and unlawful, but is worried to the consequences he might encounter if he reports the incident. The employee fears that his job security might be threatened if he attempts to report a superior. Hence, the employee is faced with an ethical dilemma which needs to be addressed appropriately.
According to Ferrell (2015), an action may be termed as harassment if its rifeness creates a work environment that seems offensive and hostile to most rational people or employees. In this scenario, the employee may decide to view it from a utilitarian perspective whereby he makes an ethical decision that will bring the greatest good for majority. Hence, the best decision would be to report the case to the human resource manager to save the co-workers from this intoxicating environment. From a realistic perspective, the employee may assume that it is in human nature to place their self-interest first and may decide not to risk losing their jobs in attempt of reporting the superior.
Common Ethical Decisions
Employee theft and misusing company time are some of the common ethical decisions that employees make which may result to an ethical dilemma. A common form of misusing company time would be covering for a co-worker that conducts personal business during company time (Ferrell, 2015). The ethical dilemma in such situation would be on whether to rat out your co-worker to the company to save yourself from any future consequences or remain loyal to your co-worker. Also, employees are often tempted to steal from their employees which may take many forms such as stealing company proprietary information or time by wrongly reporting sick leave. According to Ferrell (2015), employee theft is highest during difficult economic times or among employees that are poorly paid or facing threats of cutbacks. Both employee theft and misusing company time represent ethical absolutes whereby an employee faces conflicting thoughts on choosing the best ethical decision to make. In most companies, during induction, employees undergo ethical training which help them make the right decision when encountered with such unethical dilemmas. Ferrell (2015), argues that most people justify their unethical behavior through displacement of responsibility methods whereby they blame others for their behavior or comparison method whereby they compare their unethical behavior with a more severe act. An employee that is aware of the consequences of being caught in theft or misusing company time will surely choose to evade such unethical behaviors.
References
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Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. (2015). Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Nelson Education. Thomas, S. L., Rothschild, P. C., & Donegan, C. (2015). Social networking, management responsibilities, and employee rights: the evolving role of social networking in employment decisions. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 27(4), 307-323.
Appendix
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