...In an organization, workplace ethics should be a core value. Aside from doing the right thing, conducting ethically has great rewards and returns. Being ethical is essential to fixing problems and improving processes. It is needed to establish baseline measures and increase efficiencies. Most importantly, it is essential to having strong working relationships with people. Workplace ethics is integral in fostering increased productivity and teamwork among employees. It helps in aligning the values of the business with workers, which enhances community, integrity and openness among employees. Ethics enable employees to feel a strong alignment between their values and those of the business. Workplace ethics leads to happy and satisfied employees who enjoy coming to work rather than treating it as a mere source of burden. Employees also develop a feeling of loyalty and attachment towards the organization. Strong ethical culture in workplace is also important in safeguarding business assets. Employees who abide by workplace ethics would be able to protect and respect business assets. For example, they would avoid making personal long distance calls using the business’s lines. Ethical conduct in the workplace encourages a culture of making decisions based on ethics. It also enhances accountability and transparency when undertaking business decisions. During turbulent times, a strong ethical culture can guides you in managing such conflicts by making the right moves. It can help...
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...Ethics in the Workplace Results of a recent national study provide solid data that leaders who want to establish a practice of positive workplace ethics within their organizations should develop written ethics standards, provide ethics training, and ensure resources are available for employees in need of ethics advice. By Joshua Joseph, Lee Wan Veer, and Ann McFadden Ethics Association executives typically want the answers to two key questions about ethics in their association offices: “How do workplace ethics apply to the practical goals of my organization and the work of my employees?” and “Can you show me reliable data that support your assertions?” In this article, we address those questions as we present findings from the Ethics Resource Center’s 2000 National Business Ethics Survey (2000 NBES) - a rigorous telephone survey of 1,500 U.S. employees - and discuss what these findings mean for association executives. One caveat first - we focus on issues relevant to an association’s internal staff and to ethics programs designed for them, not for association members whose relationships with their organization are often very different from those of staff. In the 2000 NBES, we gathered information on three key elements of an ethics program: written ethics standards, ethics training,and means for employees to get ethics advice (e.g., a telephone help line or ethics office). Ethics Trends Studies show that formal ethics programs are becoming increasingly common...
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...In conceptualizing the idea of ethics in a workplace, it is important to understand and evaluate the outcomes or implications of any given action. Whether this decision lies in your control, or you are simply an observant of your colleagues’ actions, it is critical to your well-being and credibility that you choose the positive moral action. Let's examine what corporations are doing to address the ballooning issue, other possible consequences on ignoring professional ethics in a workplace, and what corporations can do to ensure they provide and maintain an ethical and legal business environment. Survey Method and Results According to a recent survey of more than 2,300 workers by KPMG LLP, illegal or unethical behavior in the workplace has soared. More than three fourths of those surveyed said they had observed unethical behavior, including deceptive sales practices, unsafe working conditions, mishandling proprietary or confidential information, discrimination, and sexual harassment (Allesandra Losciale, Newsday). Issue Vocalized Due to ever changing demands on business performance from internal and external forces, corporations need to recognize the growing problem with ethics. It comes in many forms, from lying to your boss, to forging financial documents for company or personal gain. Lot of these unethical decisions have been the downfall of companies, and have led to imprisonment of executives. We as a business community need to familiarize ourselves with potential issues...
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...Are Ethics in the Workplace Disappearing? By CATHERINE VALENTI Feb. 21, 2012 Enron executives allegedly made millions selling company shares while urging employees to buy the soon-to-be-worthless stock, and set up private partnerships that cloaked huge losses as they touted their successes to investors. While investigators struggle to determine who knew what when in the Enron debacle, the giant energy firm's implosion promises to be a virtual case study in corporate ethics. Was the downfall the fault of a few executives who knowingly misled others, the outcome of a distorted corporate culture, or mere incompetence? Bad Actors, Peer Pressure The history of business in the United States is littered with tales of fraud, deceit and corruption, not only by the hands of a greedy few at the top, but also with the help of employees willing to go along with the charade. Unethical behavior at the office can sometimes stem from a few "bad apples" among the bunch, people like Nick Leeson, the young stockbroker whose huge losses from illegal trades led to the downfall of the venerable Barings Bank. But experts note that ethical breaches are often the result of the corporate culture or pressure from management, pressure that can emerge when a company finds itself unable to live up to financial forecasts or expectations and tries to bend the rules to achieve them, says Linda Treviño, professor of organizational behavior at Penn State's Smeal College of Business Administration...
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...Workplace Ethics: Unprofessional Conduct BUS 309 Business Ethics Professor: Keith Graves August 23, 2013 Today, there seems to a big misconception of what professionalism means in and out the workplace. Many people go to work just to earn a living and that is fine however, when you hold a position of stature or prestige there are certain elements you must value to the profession as a teacher. “Professional teacher” refers to the status of a person who is paid to teach. They are supposed to represent the best in the profession (Tichenor, J & M., 2005)”. Teachers are theoretically able to analyze the needs of the students for whom they are responsible. The word “professionalism” does not mean to just wear a suit and tie, or dress neatly; it means to conduct oneself with principles, honestly and have accountability for one’s actions. Opposite from what people believe ethics and morals is not about religion, societal beliefs or behaviors; it simply deals with individuals’ character and morals in which governs their conduct. Ethics is a set of principles, whose sole purpose is to identify the rules that govern people’s behavior. Workplace ethics and behavior is vital to any profession and organization especially, now that we have learned about all these scandals on misappropriation of funds of top executives and government officials...
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...Ethics in the Workplace Ethics can be very difficult to define. Most people believe ethics are personal, religious, or societal beliefs or behaviors. In the workplace most people believe that what is legal is ethical. The problem is none of these things defines ethics. Ethics refers to what is right or wrong and standards of conduct. I read something that said the golden rule defines what ethics is “do onto others as you would have done onto you”. In today’s business world ethics are more important than ever. With scandals like Enron and Martha Stewart people have lost their confidence in the business world, but more than that people need to feel that as technology speeds ahead that ethics will play a role in the future. Technology runs our lives. We can’t live without the internet, our cell phones, or other mobile devices, but as these technologies make our lives and jobs easier, there is also more opportunity for people to use these technologies unethically. Companies, outsiders, and employees all have a role in workplace ethics. Companies have to be ethical in many different situations. They need to make sure they are conducting business ethically, make sure they are protecting employee and customer information, and they need to make sure they are ethical to their employees. In the Enron situation top executives ordered files to be destroyed after they knew an investigation had begun. This was not only unethical but against the law. Companies also need to insure that...
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...Assignment 2: Workplace Ethics Danielle Davis Professor Kenneth A. Pino BUS 309: Business Ethics Abstract Regardless of your occupation, employees have the right to privacy. Case 9.1: Unprofessional Conduct shows how Pettit privacy was violated. Pettit was a teacher of many years and never had a bad evaluation of her work. What she did outside of work was labeled unprofessional by the Board of Education and they chose to fire her because they believed she was unfit to teach. I disagree with them completely and they did violate her privacy. Business Ethics is defined as “the study of what constitutes right and wrong (or good and bad) human conduct in a business context” (Shaw, 2014, p. 4). Based off this definition, I believed that Pettit should not have been fired. I also believe that the Board of Education definitely violated her right to privacy and they were not justified in firing her. Pettit was a dedicated teacher for many years and she did not involve her personal life in the workplace. Because of her sexual preferences, she was judged and fired from her job. The Board of Education should not have fired Pettit is due to the fact that they had no evidence to prove that she was not doing her job correctly and her privacy was violated. Pettit was an elementary school teacher who taught children with disabilities. The case study said that “Mrs. Pettit was one of those dedicated teachers”……and “she had been working with mentally challenged children for over thirteen...
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...Discuss an organizational example of the use of ethical standards in management communications. The example may be from your own workplace or from a business situation with which you are familiar. Support your answer by indicating why you believe it is an example of communicating in an ethical manner; use references to validate your analysis. Respond to at least two of your classmates’ postings by commenting on the examples they have given. Workplace ethics are codes of conduct that promote the creation of an ethical culture within a certain business (O’Rourke, 2010). At my workplace we have what is called the “Honor Code”. Simply put this codes states that “no member of the community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the community”. This code has been put in place to encourage an environment of cooperation and collaboration rather than competition that could easily take hold in such a competitive environment. This code is communicated to all members of the academic community frequently and is reinforced by the freedoms allowed based on the belief that all members of the community are following this code. For example, students have 24 hour access to all buildings on campus, they are also allowed to collaborate on homework assignments and exams and all exams are take home exams with a self administered time limit. Members of the community follow this code and they also know that the university itself follows this code and so the system does actually...
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...Ethics in the Workplace University Of Phoenix Ethics in the Workplace Cause for the Fall of Enron The cause for the fall of Enron was in 2001 when the accounting firm Arthur Andersen was involved in unethical practices with the accounting procedures conducted throughout the 1990’s. This scandal caused the dissolution of the accounting firm which was one of the top five accounting firms. One August 14, 2001, the CEO of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling announced he was resigning his position after only six months. He sold a minimum of 450,000 shares of his stock earning him $33 million dollars. Kenneth Lay, the chairman of the company assured stakeholders that there was no accounting issues or any trading issues and that he would resume the position of CEO after the departure of Skilling. Enron’s stocks plummeted from $90 per share to less than .50 cents when it was revealed that much of its profits and revenue were from deals with special purpose entities. On October 22, 2001, the share price of the stock went from $20.65 down to $5.40 in one day, following the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) announcement that it was investigating several suspicious deals struck by Enron pronouncing “some of the most opaque transactions with insiders ever seen”. Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were indicted in January 2006 for bank fraud, money laundering, wire fraud, conspiracy, and insider trading. Mr. Lay pleaded not guilty to eleven criminal charges...
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...BOFF108 – Ethics in the Workplace – Chapter 3 Homework Danville Area Community College Please read the chapter and complete the items below with blanks next to them. This sheet should be completed before the start of class, and you should come prepared to discuss these items in class. Items with only bullet points do not need to be completed before class. Bullet points are included so you can take notes on an example based on class discussions. Example: Will is in a Tough Spot at the Electric Company Main Point: Will works at the electric company with management fight for new contracts. The employees are upset over work wages, and stealing equipment. Will is stuck between doing the right or wrong thing. Key Detail #1: Will works for an electric company. Who is fighting for new contracts? Key Detail #2: Workers are upset about work wages, and stealing due to the situation of the company. Key Detail #3: Will informs his supervisor of the problems, but his supervisor ask him to stay quiet about it, and it’ll work itself out. Will doesn’t know what to do. Is it ethical, yes or no? No Why or why not? : Will should say something to upper management. For moral development, (right from wrong). The right thing to do is tell the truth. Being honest & loyal to his company he works for. And the fairness or equity of the company also known as Justice. He would only jeopardize his job, and put himself in a bad situation, if he lied about it. Also the company is losing money...
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...COMM120 Zarchfel N. Lumasag 2FREE1 TH 8:00 -11:00 AM Narrative Analysis of Night Crawler Night crawler opens with the image of an unaltered billboard that is draped in white. The billboard that would normally promote, advertise or represent something is instead blank, emotionless. This could not be a more appropriate image to open this film with consideringNightcrawler is a film that is devoid of emotion, sentiment or integrity. This form of detachment from human emotion does not stem from the film’s content, but rather from Jake Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of the film’s main character, Lou Bloom. Even in the strictest of definitions, the character is a sociopath who feeds off the vulnerability of others. By proxy of Gyllenhaal’s performance, the film transforms itself into an unapologetic film that chronicles the plight of its lead character without ever throwing judgment or morality upon his actions. A sociopath, in many regards, is opportunists. They craft a narrative and use their persuasive social skills to create an entry into individual’s lives, companies or corporations. Typically such personalities are perceived to be harmless, such as being personable and generating attention towards them. Also, their inability to feel guilt often feeds into their confidence, which allows for them to present themselves as being more than they actually are. Gyllenhaal’s performance occupies many of these qualities, to which the viewer...
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...JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT HEALTH 2000;27S:8–14 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS Media and Youth: Access, Exposure, and Privatization DONALD F. ROBERTS, Ph.D. Purpose: To describe U.S. youth’s access and exposure to the full array of media, as well as the social contexts in which media exposure occurs. Methods: A cross-sectional national random sample of 2065 adolescents aged 8 through 18 years, including oversamples of African-American and Hispanic youth, completed questionnaires about use of television, videotapes, movies, computers, video games, radio, compact discs, tape players, books, newspapers, and magazines. Results: U.S. youngsters are immersed in media. Most households contain most media (computers and video game systems are the exception); the majority of youth have their own personal media. The average youth de3 votes 64 h to media; simultaneous use of multiple media increases exposure to 8 h of media messages daily. Overall, media exposure and exposure to individual media vary as a function of age, gender, race/ethnicity, and family socioeconomic level. Television remains the dominant medium. About one-half of the youth sampled uses a computer daily. A substantial proportion of children’s and adolescents’ media use occurs in the absence of parents. Conclusions: American youth devote more time to media than to any other waking activity, as much as one-third of each day. This demands increased parental attention and research into the effects of such...
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...Fairness in Hiring and Promotions, Employee’s Rights and Duties Business Ethics has been an issue for the past four thousand years. The Mesopotamian rulers attempted to create honest prices and the Aristotle discussed the vices and virtues of tradesmen and merchants. In the Old Testament there are discussions on the topic of fraud, theft, proper weights, and competition; in the New Testament business ethics as it relates to poverty and wealth are discussed (Hoffman, Frederick, & Schwartz, 2001, p. 3). In current times the discussions of Business Ethics is moving towards a different approach. There will always be organizations more concern about the financial interest of the shareholders than the consumer; however, there is now a growing interest among US companies to corporate social responsibility as a way to benefit both the community and the organization. This paper will briefly compare and contrast the various theories of economic Justice of Fairness, Distributive Justice, Utilitarianism, Capitalism and Morality, and Socialism; and reveal the one theory I believe to be the most practical; and the best theory of economic justice as it applies to the “fairness in hiring and promotions, and employees’ rights and duties.” Justice of Fairness includes components of the Principle of Liberty that every one deserve the right to basic liberties; and the Principle of Equality falls in line with the distributive justice for social...
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...The Importance of Ethics in the Workplace Ethics, defined by Webster’s Dictionary, is “the discipline dealing with what is good and bad or right and wrong or with moral duty and obligation” (Merriam-Webster, 2002). There are no hard and fast rules that govern ethics, just agreed standards of moral duty and obligation. There are also civil, criminal and family laws, etc., that describe right and wrong for everyone. However, there are occupations where you do not violate the law but violate ethical standards. For example, as an attorney you can violate the ethical standards set by the State Bar Association; one might not be jailed for the offense but one will only be reprimanded. Workplace ethics can have a negative or positive outcome. Matt Larson used good ethics with a positive outcome; he went to great lengths to assist a member of the credit union where he worked. Queiana Hill used good work ethics in her workplace, hoping for a positive outcome; however, the ethics of her supervisor were most definitely negative. Given the two following examples, a Code of Ethics is standard in most businesses and generally used as a guidepost with or without an absolute outcome (University of Phoenix Material, n.d.). Good ethics in the workplace can often be the result of the personal ethics of the individual employee. An employee’s concern for their work or those they help can wield a multitude of results based on how they handle the situation. Matt Larson’s example is a good interpretation...
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...Managing Ethics in the Workplace Trinidad,Loudine T. BSE-4C Marketing Prof. Rose Marie Ramos Managing Ethics in the Workplace Managing workplace ethics promotes shared values that result in better cohesion of the workforce, and play a crucial role in the success of any organization Workplace ethics are the application of morality, or concepts such as good and bad, right and wrong, justice and virtue to all activities of the business. It closely relates to corporate social responsibility, but is much wider in scope. The scope of business ethics lies in two dimensions: 1. Workplace behavior ethics, or the illegal and questionable practices of individual managers, such as wrongful use of resources, mismanagement of contracts and agreements for personal gain, conflict of interests, and the like. 2. Business ethics issues, such as ethical dilemmas when making decisions, dealing with stakeholders, and the like. The primary requirement for managing ethics in the workplace is an understanding that workplace ethics is a continuous and on-going process ingrained to management practices, and not a deliverable defined project. It influences the way the organization functions, and remains independent of profits or product range. • Ethics Policy Irrespective of the dimension of business ethics, the basic requirement for managing ethics in the workplace is to have a strong ethics policy in place that makes the company’s ethics policy transparent...
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