Ethical Dilemmas Values - Essay Example

Discuss how ethical dilemmas may arise when the values between an employee and a company or the values among different groups of stakeholders are competing The search for excellence begins with ethics. Every time a person chooses between alternatives, the choice is based on assumptions that lie at the heart of a moral code. The code is grounded in values that provide the framework for principled reasoning and ethical decisions. Commerce depends for its very existence on the ethical behavior of the vast majority of participants. It requires that contracts are honored, private property is respected, and promises are kept. It relies upon the unspoken sentiments of fair play and camaraderie. Ethical practices make good business sense, because ethical companies suffer less resentment, less litigation, and less regulatory oversight. Furthermore, ethical managers and ethical businesses tend to be more trusted and better treated by employees, suppliers, stockholders, and consumers. Organizations are a reflection of society; they are the method by which individuals unite to form a network of common interest. And each organization is a fluid enterprise. At its center are the managers and executives responsible for directing the resources of the company. Shareholders own the capital and expect a return on their investment. Workers produce the goods and expect a decent wage and safe working conditions. To have a successful enterprise, each group must be responsive to the others and balance its interest against the interests of the others. When the balance is upset or when the interests pull too hard against each other, the ethical system is damaged. For an enterprise to continually give value to human effort and to encourage creative achievements, a balance of all interests is required ( Parry, 2001). Administrative actions are shaped by three domains: legality, free choice, and integrity. The law defines and constrains the limits of potential actions, specifying the bounds of lawful behavior. What is legal is not necessarily moral; what is not prohibited by law is not necessarily ethical; and what minimally meets the law is not necessarily proper. While the law codifies customs, ideals, beliefs, and moral values of a society, it cannot possibly cover all possible human actions (Beauchamp, Bowie, 2002). The rightness of actions is constrained by the third domain, integrity, which is obedience to the unenforceable. This represents unwritten, often unspoken, guidelines for behavior for which no legal mandates or prohibitions exist. It is the grey area where neither law nor free choice prevail. This is the realm of integrity, the necessary foundation for ethical decision making. Ethics is different from law because it involves no formal sanctions. It is different from etiquette because it goes beyond mere social convention. It is different from religion because it makes no theological assumptions. It is different from aesthetics because it is aimed at conduct and character rather than objects. It is different from prudence because it goes beyond self-interest to include the interests of others. It is different from finance and marketing and governing and parenting and carpentry, in that it does not involve a special purpose or special role as its point of departure. Ethics is both a process of inquiry and a code of conduct. Ethical inquiry consists of asking the questions of what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong. As a code of conduct, it is a sort of inner eye that enables people to see the rightness or wrongness of their actions. Values are core beliefs about what is intrinsically desirable. They underly the choices made in work decisions just as they underlie the choices made in one's private life. They give rise to ideals that are called ethics or morals. The two terms are sometimes confused. Actually, ethics and morals are synonymous. While ethics is derived from Greek, morals is derived from Latin. They are interchangeable terms referring to ideals of character and conduct. These ideals, in the form of codes of conduct, furnish criteria for distinguishing between right and wrong. Ethical inquiry requires the decision maker to consider facts in light of important values. The conclusions reached are often stated as judgments, such as "he is a good person"; "bribery is wrong, even though it may be profitable"; "caring about others is the essence of virtue"; "the act was irresponsible"; "her character, and the character of her firm, is admirable"; or, "the key to doing right by Jones is doing what is for his own good." This is to say that moral judgments and problems are couched in a certain kind of language. Terms like good, bad, right, wrong, obligation, duty, ought, should, rights, and virtue are the characteristic coinage of moral discourse and invoke a moral frame of reference. is good, in some cases it makes it more difficult to promote other important values, such as efficiency or fairness. A corporation is made up of individual employees. When they go to work each day they take their respective moral codes with them. To a great extent, it is true that to have ethical employees, a company must hire ethical applicants. But there is no guarantee that people with high scores on a test of moral values will necessarily behave ethically. Knowing what is right and good is one thing, but what really matters is whether or not people put their values into practice in the workplace. Ethics refers to standards by which individuals evaluate their own conduct and the conduct of others. Most ethical decisions do not hold one's life in the balance. They are day-to-day decisions that people make and often take for granted in the world of work: treating others with respect, keeping promises, making personnel decisions, looking out for friends, giving and accepting gifts, padding expense vouchers, or reporting wrongdoing. On a greater scale of wrongdoing are failure to respect confidential information, failure to report important information, invasions of privacy,unnecessary secrecy, conflicts of interest, kickbacks, taking advantage of insider information, theft of company funds, bribery, and commercial espionage. Employees engage in some behaviors because they assume that as long as they are the only persons doing it, little harm can come of it. Ethical problems mushroom when several people follow the same logic. Before long, what started as inattentiveness to complaints, failure to evaluate inefficiency and waste, and failure to keep abreast of what is going on in the company results in secrecy, doing less than the best, corruption, and ultimately ineffectiveness. Being sensitive to ethical issues and incorporating them into decision making decreases the likelihood of costly mistakes. Ethical wrongdoing affects morale within the company and has the potential to damage relations with the company's major constituents, including customers, clients, shareholders, and suppliers, as well as the general public. The Contradictory values contribute to the complexity of ethical inquiry. To maximize one value often requires diminishing others. For example, while an organization's dedication to producing quality products or services is laudable, an emphasis on quality may deemphasize quantity, or in some circumstances, efficiency (Yves, 1999). Or, while objectivity and impersonal procedures and actions are seen as good, they preclude taking individual circumstances into account. Or, while friendship on the job way executives handle sticky issues can fundamentally alter their effectiveness and credibility because their decisions reflect their personal integrity and courage, influence the trust others are willing to place in them, and communicate conviction or vacillation on issues that matter deeply to many others. Some corporations create a moral environment by specifying a distinct set of values and standards to which they hold their people accountable. A corporation that is serious about maintaining high ethical standards may shut down a plant when it fails to meet internal quality standards, remove controversial products from the market, and fire individuals who cross ethical lines. In the end, the difference in the value system of employees, stakeholders and other people engaged in the common business environment, causes various ethical conflicts and misunderstanding leading to the breakdown in communication. The latter is essential to the successful organization, that it why such dilemmas are important to be managed wisely. The most effective way of doing so would be providing the general set of rules and ethical behaviours for employees and managers. Bibliography: 1. Beauchamp Tom L., and Norman E. Bowie, eds. 2002. "Ethical theory and business." Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 2. Parry Charles W. 2001. "My company--right or wrong" Vital Speeches of the Day 51(Aug. 1):632-34. 3. Simon Yves R. 1999. "The definition of moral virtue". Edited by Vukan Kuic. New York: Fordham University Press. Read More