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Importance of ethical decision making
Importance of ethical decision making
Importance of ethical decision making
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Ethical decision-making is the responsibility of everyone, regardless of position or level within an organization. Interestingly, the importance of stressing employee awareness, improving decisions, and coming to an ethical resolution are the greatest benefits to most companies in today’s world (Weber, 2015).
The ethical code of an organization illustrates the importance of being honest, acting with integrity, and showing fairness in decision making (Bethel, 2015). Ultimately, “laws regulating business conduct are passed because some stakeholders believe they cannot be trusted to do what is right” (Ferrell, Fraedrich, & Ferrell, 2015, p. 95). In the last couple of years, culture has become the initiator for compliance, which means from the top down there has to be a commitment to act in a way that represents the company’s core values (Verschoor, 2015).
For 27 years, I worked for The Kroger Company all over the Middle Tennessee area. Annually, ethics training was conducted in the stores and at the administrative and corporate level. Additionally, each year officials were required to make disclosures of any and all gifts, meals, or other items of monetary value received during the last year. Ultimately, Kroger was and is very concerned about maintaining high ethical standards.
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Companies that do not take steps to ensure appropriate associate conduct will be penalized by their constituents and erode public confidence in our free enterprise system” (Kroger, 2014, p. 1). Therefore, as one of the largest retail grocers in the country, they are sincere about their obligation to follow the law and ensure transparency in their operations. Additionally, their core values support the goal of maintaining an ethical workplace, which includes: honesty, integrity, respect, diversity, safety, and
Lowe’s and Home Depot introduce each other in a message that clarifies their own explanation of Code of Ethics. Both encourage doing the right thing while performing a job that may not always cover all situations. However, employees’ are provided a strategic map that may...
By proactively addressing ethical issues with a code of conduct, Raiders Inc. can set the standard regarding how they want employees to behave. Employee can be trained on the company code of ethics so they understand how their company expects them to respond. They can also train them on the biases of decision making, to make sure they are aware of the pitfalls that exist. (Robbins & Coulter, 2012)
Wal-mart is currently the world’s largest company. It has seen continuous growth and financial success since it was founded in 1962. Today it is living off of a previous reputation of solid ethical business practices that are no longer being exercised. Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-mart, was considered to be “freakishly cheap… Cost-cutting was an obsession in the Wal-mart culture… on business trips, everyone, including the boss, flew coach, and hotel rooms were always shared.” (reclaimdemocracy.org. 2006). This was only part of the reason for Sam Walton’s success.
Ethics is not something that can be forced upon people, and must be implemented in a way that changes the underlying culture that causes unethical behavior. The challenge of changing the culture and the climate of Wells Fargo is an extraordinarily daunting one. With well over 250,000 employees, Wells Fargo is an absolutely enormous company, and it has long been known throughout the banking industry for its incredible sales record. To change the ethical culture and climate of the organization, the root of past ethical issues, requires creative
Ikea, another large, global retailer, as well as other major corporations, have recently faced the consequences of their own missteps related to ethical dilemmas. Target had an opportunity to set themselves apart from the others, by handling their shortcomings with honesty. Steinhafel's decision to quickly share all of the information that Target had rather than hide information that was not favorable could go a long way in dealing with the challenge to remain competitive, maintain ethical standards, and encourage workplace happiness and meaningfulness. A customer's trust or whether or not they believe a company is honest and socially ethical will determine their loyalty to that company. Therefore, in this one decision, Steinhafel set an ethical standard of full disclosure and transparency for Target, as well as gained the trust of Target's customer's in the long run.
A code of ethics is essential in today business world, and customers honestly base a company’s reputation on these bases. Simply defined a code of ethics is a set of core values designed to help professionals manage a business that is honest and possess integrity. For example, a code of ethics document should highlight the mission and the values of a business. As well as, illustrate how professionals should approach issues, the ethical principles based on the company’s core values, and caliber to which the professionals are held. It is highly critical that a company like the Cheesecake Factory withholds an ethical and socially responsive code of conduct.
Establishing and implementing a strategic approach to improving organizational ethics is based on establishing, communicating, and monitoring ethical values and legal requirements that characterize the firm's history, culture, and operating environment” (p. 129). Ethics programs ensure satisfactory relationships with all stakeholders by aligning with all of their demands and needs, and determine conduct with customers and relationships with regulators, shareholders, suppliers, and employees (Ferrell, 2004). Values are a core set of beliefs and principles, one or many. A number of factors contribute to the development of values. These include membership in a community or culture, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.
Workplace ethics engages in judgements and collective agreements regarding a suitable guide of behaviour. The ethical decision making framework (EDM) presents, business decision is ethical or unethical.EDM provides an indication of traditional decision making process and issues that manipulate ethical decisions. Employees tend to fraud because they can experience the unfair treatments or situation that they face. Manages may ask employee to work long hours, and then they can take additional time off. Good performance leads to remunerations and appreciation managers than workers.
Verschoor, C. C. (2012). New survey of workplace ethics shows surprising results. Strategic Finance, 93(10), 13-15. Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=12&sid=dac69b8f-b6d7-4136-8b8f-5d852423bdf6%40sessionmgr4005&hid=4103
For a company to be successful ethically, it must go beyond the notion of simple legal compliance and adopt a values-based organizational culture. A corporate code of ethics can be a very valuable and integral part of a company’s culture but I believe that it is not strong enough to stand alone. Thought and care must go into constructing the code of ethics and the implementation of it. Companies need to infuse ethics and integrity throughout their corporate culture as well as into their definition of success. To be successfully ethical, companies must go beyond the notion of simple legal compliance and adopt a values-based organizational culture.
Chief Ethics Officers (CEOs) may not have been very popular around a decade ago, but the demand for such a position is beginning to grow within larger companies. From this point forward, when I mention CEOs in this paper, please understand that I am referring to Chief Ethics officers and not Chief Executive Officers. CEOs began appearing in corporate America around the same time as the inception of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for corporations. According to these guidelines, the companies who have instituted compliance and ethics programs within their institutions wouldn’t have received as severe a punishment as those without the programs in place[2].
Making good ethical decisions requires a trained sensitivity to ethical issues and a practiced method for exploring the ethical aspects of a decision and weighing the considerations that should impact our choice of a course of action. Having a method for ethical decision making is absolutely essential. When practiced regularly, the method becomes so familiar that we work through it automatically without consulting the specific steps.
Many laws have been put into place to make sure corporations act ethically, so they do not harm people or the environment. Corporations have a social responsibility to follow these laws and various other ethical actions; Johnson & Johnson, considered to be one of the most admirable companies according to Fortune, is one company that included their corporate social responsibilities in their code of ethics. Their code of ethics states that executive officers cannot financially benefit from unethical transactions or that their management must be competent and ethical (Code of Business Conduct, 2015). It is important for corporations to act ethically and hold up to their social responsibility, especially within the workplace; ethics are especially
... when dealing with the code of ethics. When becoming an employee at a Dunkin’ Donuts establishment it is important for them to have a personal responsibility to understand and apply ethical behavior and act with the highest degree of ethics. The Code of Ethics provides managers and employees with guidelines and expectations on how to behave when working in the workplace. It is extremely important to provide workers with a Code of ethics because without it employees would be lost and wouldn’t have guidelines on how to be their best when working at the said Dunkin’ Donuts establishment. The Dunkin’ donuts industry is extremely dependent on they’re every day dealings with their co-workers. The Code of Ethics makes it easier for each worker to do the best they can when working for Dunkin’ Donuts and comply themselves to all their responsibilities the greatest they can.
Ethics is central for any organization in treating employees fairly and helping the organization advance its mission. There is no single best way for dealing with ethical challenges, but it is very important for managers to develop ethical policies and procedures for implementation. To minimize possible unethical decisions by staff members, it is important to incorporate written standards grounded in organizational values in the code of conduct.