How personal can ethics get? (1451 words) Essay

HOW DOES PERSONAL DIFFERENCES AND PREFERENCES IMPACT ORGANIZATIONAL ETHICSWith a society that has built its origins on diversity (melting pot), come many challenges when it pertains to handling diversity within an organization. People and their personal preferences and individual differences are at conflict on a daily basis. How a person was raised, his or her religion, and his/her personal morals are constantly being challenged. What we must come to grips with is that all individuals will have to eventually come together within an organization to make things work.
Within a particular organization personal preferences and differences can impact an organization in a both positive and negative manner. For instances, if the leader of an organization has issues with trust and his personal preference is to check up on individual often, he can affect his organization in a very negative way. He will do this be creating a tense environment where his employees feel that they are being micromanaged therefore they become disgruntled employees. The resentment felt by the employees could transfer into poor production, low quality products, or even bad customer service.
Take a different leader that has believes that people work best in comfortable and inviting environments. His preference may be to allow his employees to work from home and encourage that they constantly give input into the direction of the company. With his actions he creates a corporate culture that is very pleasant and has a great sense of unity. This leader?s preference is to always seek input from his employees and he leads by example of great work ethic. This may create an environment where employees are happy and thriving. These employees will be very productive, produce high quality products, and have stellar customer service.
In leadership roles, it is important to identify the differences and embrace them.
ORGANZATIONAL POLICES AND PROCEDURES IMPACT ON ETHICS
When leaders of any organization set out to create policies and procedures for their company, it is almost impossible to avoid the issue of ethics. Creating ethical policy and procedures is not a simple as it sounds. Sure enough, if the CEO wrote every policy and procedure based on what he or she felt was ethically sound, he or she wouldn?t have a problem with anything. However, in the real world he and she must take in to account that there are a vast number employees that his or her policies and procedures will affect, therefore they must consider this. Not everyone feels the same way about certain issues. More so, not all countries feel the same way about what?s ethically acceptable.

Once the policies and procedures are adopted, it is necessary to encompass all ethical issues in every inch of the organization. Boeing does a fine job of establishing it?s company values by placing them clearly in a booklet all on ethics. By establishing this core values the executives have laid the foundation for the entire organization to follow. They expect their employees uphold the highest level of conduct in regards to handling any business for Boeing. (Boeing, 2010)
Bribery has been a widely acceptable way of doing business in China. In fact many products and services that are supported by bribes actually perform better and are more readily available. (Chen, 2009). Therefore businessmen must know how to ?work a deal? if they want to stay in business. For instance, in America bribery is not an acceptable or ethical way of doing business. However, when doing business in some African and Asian countries, bribery is just a part of the daily process. In these instances, American executives must find a way to deal business successfully without veering too far away from acceptable American business practices.
Interestingly, the very popular clothing retail giant ?The Gap? faced issues of ethics when dealing with its factories that are run overseas. When faced with an over 60% turnover rate, the vice president for social responsibility Dan Henkle discovered that the conditions in which would never be tolerated or seen ethical in the US were perhaps the main cause of this grossly high turnover rate. To counter the 60% turnover rate, Henkle put programs in place that would ensure the employees were treated ethically. He focused the programs to change the amount employee work hours required to a reasonable amount.He set out to eradicate child slave labor, amongst many other changes. After tightening up these guidelines, The Gap ended up dropping 136 factories from the supplier list after those factories were found to be in violation of the new ethical work standards that Henkle had put in place. (Hellriegel, 2011)
ETHICAL DELIMMAS THAT VALARIE FACES
Valerie Young a marketing personnel member of a very successful cosmetics company faces the issues of ethics when she discovers her boss is cutting deals on the side with the companies perfume suppliers. Valarie was very shocked by this and faced some real hard decisions. Unfortunately, my personal experience in the corporate world has quite frankly jaded me on these types of issues as they happen all the time. However, in Valarie?s case, she was shocked and understandably upset by her boss?s deceitful side deals. While simply bring her boss?s bad deals to the light is the absolutely correct thing to do, there are so many other things that she consider prior to doing so. After all her citizenship status could be compromised if she loses her job. Too many times the good guy is used as collateral damage when they go against the grain and try to do what?s right. Valerie should be very cautious about the unspoken ?good ole boy? system that secretly lives throughout corporate world. According to Michael Kalichman of Resources for Research Ethics, Education, approximately 60% of whistleblowers fall victim to at least 1 negative consequence. Those consequences include demotion, salary decrease, all the way to being fired. (Kalichman, 2001). Valarie also has to think about how badly these side deals go against her moral compass and what his side deals could potentially do to her team and the company. There could be negative consequences that indirectly affect her team members if she outs her boss. This is a lot for anyone to ponder. I think the fact that her team has become self sufficient in her boss?s frequently absences, that the possible negative affects to her team could be minimized therefore making her decision to report him a bit easier.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR VALERIE
It is tough to recommend what someone should do in a particular situation. If I had to make a recommendation to Valerie, I would have to draw upon any past experiences that I have had that may be similar to her situation. When I do this, I think of a situation in where my past IT director abused our company?s corporate cell phone account for personal gains for he and his family. Because that particular account was under my supervision, I was not happy that he would actually do this, furthermore, I risked being reprimanded had his abuses been discovered while the account was on my watch. What did I do, I approached the IT director and told him in a very unyielding manner, that I was changing the policy on cell phone purchases that required the approval of 3 managers prior to purchase to avoid misuse of the account. Now, should I have gone further? That?s something I contemplate over quite often. In Valerie?s situation, the subject committing the offense is not her peer, but her boss. So it is more difficult to make the decision. I would advise her to provide the information to human resources anonymously without any input. Put the burden on them on whether they want to take action. Handling this way fulfill her unremitting need to do what?s right and eliminate any guilt for allowing it to continue. I don?t believe she should wait until her personal goals are met, as the issue should be addressed right away to limit the amount of damage that her company is sustaining. Valarie should also understand that she should have no guilt on the fact that someone else willingly committed a violation against Wisson?s policies and procedure. If more people would stand up for what?s ethically acceptable then corporate American would be in a much better place.

References
Boeing. (2010). Boeing Ethical Business Guidelines. Retrieved from 2011
http://boeing.com/companyoffices/aboutus/ethics/ethics_booklet.pdf
Chen, Henry. (2009) Antibribery Crackdowns Transforms Business Practices in China.
Retrieved from http://www.mwe.com/info/pubs/MX_1209.pdf
Hellriegel/Slocum. (2010). Perceptions and Attributions.. In Cenage Learning
(Ed.) Organizational Behavior (pp. 106-125)
Kalichman, Michael, (2001). Whistleblowing. Resources for Research Ethics Education
Retrieved from 2001. http://research-ethics.net/topics/whistleblowing/#summary

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