Business Ethics within the Organization - Case Study Example

Business Ethics My organization claims to be ethical and to be socially responsible. The ethical value of business decisions, however, at some pointsis questioned. This paper seeks to examine whether my organization is indeed as ethical as it claims to be? If yes, how it can further be improved and if no what are the areas that need to be worked on. As a person my vision is that my organization should be one of the most sought after employers as I believe that it is the people who make things happen. As a person I believe that honesty and hard work should always be rewarded. I do believe in an open door policy at organizations but at the same time a corporate decorum including following a formal chain of command is also necessary. Also, I think that the end results are also important but the means to get the results should be fair and honest. So it is not only about achieving results but also about following the right policies and procedures to get those results. I believe that discrimination of any sort should be curtailed. It is also necessary to keep in mind the impact of our activities on others. The reason why I managed to settle well into my organization’s culture is that the organizational culture is aligned to my personal values. This includes having an autocratic style of leadership in which the chain of command and formal procedures are followed at all levels. However, in contingencies or in emergencies, these procedures can be shortened or overseen. The overall culture of the organization symbolizes the cold, efficiency associated with organizations operating in highly competitive markets in metropolitan city business centers. Due to this the employees will not be seen interacting too much unless necessary or on occasions like birthdays, accidents and marriages. The corporate culture is a mix of the prevailing religions but since these religions have been amalgamated in the local environment, there is a tolerance and acceptance of the various religions and people strictly tend to keep their religions to themselves. Religious discrimination is not a part of the organizations policy as it can be seen that many f the strategic posts are occupied by minority religions. Likewise, in the recruitment interview or test any questions pertaining to religions are not asked. Discrimination, unsaid and unspoken, can be observed to push ahead favorite sub-ordinates as compared to non-favorite employees. However, if this is identified, rectifying measures by the management are taken which frequently involve reassigning of job duties and inter departmental transfers. One of the best policies of this organization is the “anti-gift’ policy. The employees are not entitled to receive any gifts from clients, or to give clients high value gifts. The same applies to give & take of gifts with in the organization and gifts given from lower hierarchical levels to higher levels are strictly discouraged. Gender discrimination not only exists but is also justified by the management and the reason behind this is that in the manufacturing section, the employers say the conditions and timings are not such that women can cope up to it. So on the factory side, women can not be seen unless they are in an administrative role. Overall, the total ratio of females in the organization is 5%. The majority of the employees are old, whereas the management tends to be within the age group of 30-55, which is reasonable young, and dynamic. The company also has a policy of retaining retired employees on contract basis and the contract is renewed every year. However, this offer is not made to all employees but to the highly productive ones. Many believe that it is a policy which is highly discriminative. Most of the policies within the organization are unsaid rather than written down. The acceptable code of conduct is one of these unwritten things. There are no signages or manuals pertaining to the code of conduct. Due to this, a new recruit has to listen more, talk less and absorb more in the first three months of his job. More often new recruits find it difficult to adjust and resign before completing their probation period. There is no induction training. The employee turnover rate is very high. As such the corporate culture is more inclined towards profitability rather than taking a stock count of social costs v’s social benefits of any decisions. A good example is that the third floor where the CEO and directors occupy, have a much different and high profile ambience as compared to the rest of the floors. Also, the investment on keeping the building up to date is almost never made. The building is painted from outside only once in five years or so. This actually has a negative impact on the employees and the work environment can be rated as lowest amongst competitor and other industry organizations. Moreover, it is our company is a part of the media industry and in other companies; separate meeting rooms are made with a provision of tea & coffee. However, such facilities are not available in our organization and if the guests have to visit any employee, the only option available to serve is tea and that too arrives after thirty minutes at least. My organization is one of the newspapers operating in a highly competitive market. To survive, all the newspapers have made an association. The association acts like a cartel and have the power of disqualifying any clients/advertising agency from further advertising in any of the associated newspapers. I believe that if we were operating in a similar way in USA or UK, we would have been sued at least once for anti trust and anti-competition laws especially since our organization has the power to manipulate the associations’ decision. Harassment and molestation issues arise every now and then. To this end, the organization has stringent policies and adverse decisions may be taken to rectify this situation. Molestation of sales girls when on field are not encouraged either and in extreme case the business with the client can be suspended till the resolution of the matter. Likewise, same strategy is applied to issues within the organization and in closed door meetings the intimidator is warned and after three warnings, it can lead to termination of services. In the sales process new technologies are being used. This includes SMS marketing whereby the mobile number details of prospective clients are passed onto a third party, our outsourcing company, who in turn expedites the SMS marketing message. However, two loopholes can be identified in this. i. The privacy of the client ii. There is no guarantee that the client data will not be passed onto others. From a strictly ethical perspective, it can be questioned whether this would or would not be intrusive of the clients privacy. Also, it can be assumed that at any point in time invasion of privacy claim can be made by any of the individuals. Another issue of concern is the treatment of “volunteers”. Volunteers are hired on a day to day basis for on ground tasks for example if there is a sudden requirement of higher secondary plus students who can take calls, take messages and dispatch invitations, the company hires volunteers to help out in the work load. However, the volunteers are arranged through a third party recruiting company. The recruiting company is responsible to provide them with certificates of performance and food, to which they are entitled. Other than this, there is no stipend for the volunteers. The complaints from the volunteers have been increasing that they were not provided food or certificates by the recruiting company. Considering this and knowing that the number of complaints by the volunteers has been increasing, I believe this matter can be dealt with in a better manner if our company directly deals with it since it is affecting our name as well as seems unethical to make students work and then not give them their certificates or food. This organization has been operating in this country for over fifty years and during this time it has made huge profits and has become a large media group having many products in its portfolio. The foremost responsibility of our organization, I believe is to return a portion of the earnings to the society. This includes working on social well-being projects, promoting education or fighting life taking diseases. In this one aspect, our company is performing up to the mark as we have an internal department “the Relief Fund” dedicated to the collection of relief funds and sending it to the earth quake victims’ .However, there is a lot of room of improvement. One of our competitors has established a village near production site where there is a school and all basic facilities. I think it is a good idea. As the saying goes ‘charity begins at home’ the minimum wage being paid to the shift workers in our organization is PKR 5000, which is in accordance with the floor imposed by the government. However, due to rising food, fuel prices and inflation, this amount is not enough to lead a good life. Infact it is not even enough to make two ends meet. I would suggest that apart from the annual bonuses that the daily wage shift workers receive, the basic pay should be revised to at least a bare minimum of PKR 10,000 inclusive of house rent. The internationally applied living wage concept, especially in Canada, would be a good model to follow. Another loophole that can be identified is that shift daily wage workers are hired as functional staff. Due to this, they are not entitled to medical coverage. These workers are already having earnings to keep them just above the minimum wage levels. Medical costs can be very high and unaffordable for them. I believe as a manager I would want to provide them complete medical coverage. As an organization, I believe that compared to other organizations my organization is very ethical. However, there is considerable room for improvement especially in grey areas where ethical boundaries are not strictly defined. I would like to refer to my earlier examples where I think that my company is either not performing ethically or there are better ways to perform: 1. Treatment of Volunteers after we have outsourced this function completely to our recruiting company. 2. Providing medical coverage to shift/functional/daily wage workers 3. Privacy of clients & data sharing 4. orientation provided to new recruits after induction and career counseling However, some of the most ethical policies are: 1. Strict action against Harassment, Molestation of any sort 2. Anti Gift policy 3. Known acts of discrimination are discouraged and in extreme cases penalized 4. Establishment of relief fund to help earthquake victims. I believe that social responsibilities on the whole are taken in a limited way. This means that an organization is deemed to be socially responsible if it is investing in public welfare projects or in public relief funds. However, is that where corporate social responsibility ends? For me corporate social responsibility is also working towards providing employees all employees permanent or shift) with a good lifestyle. The ethical responsibility of the organization should extend to all other organizations where influence can be used to ensure that the other organizations like our Recruitment Company or SMS marketing company will comply with our values. This includes better treatment of volunteers and providing them with what they have been committed to. This also includes having a clause in the contract of our SMS marketing company which will prohibit the, from further private data distribution or data sharing. The key strength of ethical policies of my company include the establishment of the relief fund which is being managed very well and it is ensured that help is delivered to the needy and the donors are able to monitor where and who is utilizing their funds and for what purpose. This includes sponsoring of earthquake affected areas children’s schooling. The key weakness is that training programs and counseling sessions of the employees is not conducted. Likewise, HR department overall takes a recessive roll whereby their role is limited to payroll and administration function only. Comparing this to other companies in the same industry, HR function overall has evolved and my company lags behind in coping up with this change. One of the reasons is that it is a very sales oriented company and marketing takes lead in all strategic decision making at the organizational levels. The moral philosophy and ethical principles that I affirm most to include an appreciation of honesty. A good example is that if you are late for three days consecutively , one casual leave gets deducted and if late comings exceed six in a month a warning is issued .Due to this many employees tend to ask other people to punch their employee cards. However, many such instances have been caught and warnings were issued. On the other hand, if you have accumulated ten casual leaves and are honest to your manager, then he has the authority to condone it. Time and again issues of molestation arise. However, these are dealt with very effectively and at a very fast pace and immediate notice are taken. This includes external clients as well as internal employees. This helps in making the workplace safe and secure for women who are working. As a leader of my organization I would like to change the rules relating to volunteer management and data sharing. This might create logistical problems for the reason that or recruitment agency might not react very positively to it or might increase their commission. That would further require approvals from the higher management, so it is expected that this would be a difficult but possible change to bring about. Similarly the data management policy, will not be so difficult since it is easier to convince the management about data privacy and re-distribution issues .The most difficult change to bring about would be to provide medical coverage to temporary and shift workers and applying the living age concept. In bad economic conditions, suggesting a raise for anyone is very difficult and it will be an uphill task especially since none of our competitors are carrying this out. For this it would take at least about 2-3 years for me to have it expedited. I would start by encouraging an industrial relations meeting between the workers and the management and eventually this might be able to convince them. The results of these changes are intangible and will be felt after some time. Once of the greatest benefits would be reducing employee turnover. Another benefit is that in future it is expected that laws pertaining to corporate social responsibility might tighten. Thai investment would benefit us greatly in those times. Also, increasingly, the corporate social responsibility has become a very strong marketing positioning statement and a highly aware customer, consumer likes to deal with an organization that is highly socially responsible. References Velasquez ,Maneul ,Business Ethics Concepts & Csaes,6th edition www.dawn.com Read More