HCA’s new ethics program transformed the company in various ways. The initiatives of AHC’s new leadership resulted in a shift in the company’s ethical culture, a change that led them to overcome a range of issues that compromised the company’s reputation and future. The involvement of HCA’s top management in the implementation of the new program was crucial to its success; the partaking of HCA’s leadership in launching an ethics, compliance, and corporate responsibility program helped employees throughout the organization understand the company’s strict definition of ethical behavior. The design of the new program included monitoring techniques and an internal mechanism for employees to report misconduct, insuring that HCA could supervise the progress of the program and take corrective action if necessary. ACH’s new ethics program proved successful as it allowed the company to change paths and resolve the criminal charges it faced, while creating an opportunity for HCA to redeem itself and become a sample company in the healthcare industry. HCA’s achievements are commendable because...
Johnson & Johnson, a healthcare company that has dominated its industry for several decades, is currently undergoing managerial upheaval in light of recent blunders amongst its top-tier managers. It has spent years priding itself on appeasing stakeholders and being a safe provider of various pharmaceuticals, but product recalls and subsequent revenue drops have plagued the company as of late. Alex Gorsky spearheads Johnson & Johnson’s revival after previous CEO William Weldon resigned due to missteps. The cause of which stems from misinterpretation of common business ethics through poor leadership and social responsibility that damage the stakeholders.
An organization that lacks a true culture of ethical compliance can create problems with integrity issues with stakeholders and customers. When a major company such as Enron, was structured their approach to ethics on the surface appeared to oppose progressive innovation. The policies and ethics programs were set up to protect the company and its shareholders. According to author Berenbeim, The Enron company had a detailed code of ethics it was not enough the organization needed to incorporate ethics and integrity throughout their corporate culture. Enron had to focus on business ethics issues raised by the conduct of the company’s directors, officers, accounts and lawyers (Berenbeim, 2002).
In 2007, famed psychologist Howard Gardner was interviewed by Fryer (2007) to discuss this topic in detail. As is common knowledge, to say that trust between corporations and the public is feigning would be an understatement with unethical behaviors being perceived as the status quo thanks to the calamity of scandal plaguing Corporate America. Howard Gardner feels that with the pressure for employees and management to succeed at all costs in today’s ultra-competitive market-place, it can be easy to lose one’s way if they do not hold what he calls the ethical mind, helping people to make morally sound choices especially in work involving entities, colleagues and society as a whole (Fryer, 2007). This also serves as the author’s definition of ethics: To make morally sound choices regardless of influence of pressures or consequence even at the risk of forced resignation or involuntary termination (Fryer,
Ethical behavior, in a general sense, is a definition of moral behavior in regards to lawfulness, societal standards, and things of that nature. In the business world, ethics commonly refer to acceptable and unacceptable business practices within the workplace, and all other related environments. The acceptance of colleges regardless of ethnicity, gender, and beliefs, as well as truthfulness and honesty in relation to finances within the company are examples of ideal ethical business conducts. Unethical business behavior would include manipulating procedures based on bias or discrimination, engaging in activities that promote political gain, as well as blatant fabrication of monetary factors within the company and “can affect organizational performance and is costly to employers, employees, shareholders, and other organizational stakeholders” (Cox 263). When a corporation practices proper ethics, it is representing not only itself in a positive manner, but its partners, shareholders, and clients as well. On the other hand, when an organization partakes in unethical activities, all parties are negatively affected. The collapse of Enron is a major case of unethical conduct in the corporate world, because the circumstances surrounding the firm’s chaotic plunge where so scandalous that it left “creditors wrangling over Enron's skeletal remains” (Helyar) long after the company had seen its demise. There are numerous instances to be mentioned, including deliberate failure to properly report fiscal losses, insider trading, and overall relentlessness. The inclusive purpose of this paper is to further explore the underlining factors that contributed to the downfall of the once powerful Enron, and how a new way of approaching business ethi...
Moral and ethical leaders are essential for any successful business because these leaders are the essential links between the organization’s objectives and its stakeholders. Leaders are the face of any organization, and their actions reflect the values and the ethics the organization they represent. Therefore, if a leader’s action and decision is ethical, the stakeholders and other organizations will respect the leader and the organization. Recent history has shown that ethical behaviors are important in sustaining businesses; large corporations such as Enron, Chevron, and Worldcom, destroyed people’s lives through unethical business behaviors (Josephson, M., 2013). If these corporations and its executives have operated morally and ethically, they would have been able to avoid bankruptcy and escaped going to prison (The Economist, 2002). Having ethical leadership in organizations will help to eliminate the negative impact executive’s gre...
The ACA Ethics Committee members developed “A Practitioner 's Guide to Ethical Decision Making”, which address ethical questions in the workplace by identifying problems, deliberating potential
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].
Broadly defined business ethics is, knowing the difference between what is right and what is wrong. It is the written and unwritten, principles and values that govern how decisions are made within a company (Cross & Miller, 2012). The focus of business ethics is to identify the moral standard, and provides guidelines to follow when making tough ethical decisions. Unethical behavior is typically the result of corrupted interactions between individuals within the organization (Brown & Mitchell, 2010). Many times, unethical acts steam for behaviors that are socially or culturally acceptable within the organization. Ethical behavior can enhance a work environment and maximizes contentment, while unethical behavior may have the opposite affect. Not only can this behavior cause stress in the work place, there is the possibility of it ruining a business (Cross & Miller, 2012). Unlike corporate governance, ethical standards are not as easy to define. A code of ethics expresses fundamental principles and provides guidance to decision makers, but there are no set rules written into a code of ethics. A code of conduct is created using a company’s code of ethics. It is a statement of standard that discloses how a company chooses to conduct its business activities (Driscoll &Hoffman, 2011). Following the scandals of the early 2000’s, many companies adopted a code of conduct to ensure the compliance
The work emphasizes that having business ethics and a code of conduct can be a preventive medicine. The intended audience is the general public, management team, large businesses that have yet to create and develop a code of conduct, and businesses who are searching for a solution towards resolving ethical dilemmas in their workplace. The relevance of this work to our topic is it’s unique outlook on how the code should not only be developed with HR and the legal departments with the only intention of keeping policies legal but to see it being navigated by top management. It will also help us establish the usefulness of the code of conduct in relationships with stakeholders. A special feature of this work is the large-scale of sections it has on the topic of code of ethics. It contains a content section at the very top of the article that helps navigating toward sections easier. It also includes quotes from CEO’s, ethics professor Stephen Brenner form the Journal of Business Ethics, Twin Cities-based consultant Doug Wallace, etc. The writer of this article is Carter McNamara who has a MBA and PhD who specializes in organizational development and
This means that employees should feel comfortable with doing the right thing and speaking up when situations arise where things were not done ethically. Employees should understand what is expected of them and feel empowered to behave in an ethical manner. The lines of communication should be open so that employees are comfortable coming to management to discuss and find resolutions to ethical issues. Healthcare administrators should practice ethical decision-making at all times and help develop staff to do the same.
Business ethics are the core fundamentals of a business and are extremely important for organizations smooth and successful operation. It can have either positive impact by operating ethically or negative impact if they are caught up in any unethical situation or dilemma. Ethics has been defined as “study and philosophy of human conduct with an emphasis in determining the right and wrong” (Ferrell et.al, 2010). This case study will analyze Coca Cola for the ethical dilemmas they were involved in Belgium, and how the company responded to the issues.
Having a code of ethics leads to improved employee behavior, which is a huge part of culture for a standard company. Because employees are the people who create value for the company, in which way, they need to have honest and candid altitudes to the company. Having a code of ethic is a useful tool to manage an organization’s values, responsibilities, and ethical duties. To make the codes work, companies must put the code of conduct into the business so that employees know how it applies to them. The code is also a way for employees to get advice about ethical problems or concerns. “According to the 2009 National Business Ethics Survey, eighty-nine percent of those polled felt management adequately discussed the importance of ethical conduct. Similarly, 2008-2009 Integrity Survey, published by KPMG Forensic, it was found that ethics programs, including codes of conduct, had a strong impact on how employees felt. Ninety percent of those surveyed who worked in companies with a code of conduct felt they were motivated to do the right thing. This compares with just 43 percent of people who work in companies without strong codes of conduct.” (NCARB) The code of conduct plays an important role in the business no matter
Ethics is the responsibility of each individual person, but starts with the CEO and the Board of Directors, setting the right tone at the top and moves down through the organization, including setting the tone in the middle. A company’s culture and ethic standards start at the top, not from the bottom. Employees will almost always behave in the manner that they think management expects them, and it is foolish for management to pretend otherwise (Scudder). One of the CEO’s most important jobs is to create, foster, and communicate the culture of the organization. Wrongdoings or improper behavior rarely occurs in a void, leaders typically know when someone is compromising the company
Hypatia was born in the year 370 AD in Alexandria, Egypt. She was the daughter of Theon, a famous mathematician and astronomer. He invented many things, but his most famous invention is the astrolabe, which measures the altitude of a star or planet. Hypatia studied with her father for many years at the Museum in Alexandria, but soon became unsatisfied with his instruction because she was smarter than him. She left Egypt, and traveled to Greece and Rome to do "post-graduate" work. Her brains and beauty gave her a wonderful reputation throughout the capitols near the Mediterranean.
Corporate governances actually illustrate that no entity or agent is immune from fraudulent practices (Arjoon, 2005 p 342-344). Therefore, it is crucial for an organization to have a stable ethically healthy corporate culture, Patagonia is "doing things right" by influencing the actions of the workforce. Through the integration of ethical conduct in an organization, employees see the complexity of making ethical choices; also, it helps the staff understand what an ethical decision entails and how to talk about hard ethical choices and taking responsibility for making moral choices carefully and