...technology create opportunities as well as challenges for businesses. Organizations continually pursue business standards that support a connection between the fundamentals of the business operations and its ethical obligations. Furthermore, this student will analyze how setting and managing ethical standards using technology influences company’s’ culture, work environment structure, and in what way company’s culture is affected by operating technology to accomplish human resources functions. Setting and Managing Ethical Standards Ethical standards are values that endorse shared values such as kindness, trust, social responsibility, and fairness. For example, in the opening statement in the General Dynamic Standards of Business Ethics and Conduct guide Daniel Johnson President General Dynamics states, “General Dynamics Information Technology is strongly committed to adhering to certain principles of ethical standards and practices. We expect not only General Dynamics employees, but also our partners in business, to abide by these same ethical standards and practices. Please read this booklet carefully as it sets forth the high standards and principles we feel are important in doing business with our company. Be aware that the high standards we are committed to upholding are the same principles that we expect your company and employees to adhere to when doing business with General Dynamics. We believe it is in our mutual interest to foster a relationship built upon common...
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...Abstract Within the accounting profession there are many complex ethical issues that must be dealt with quite often. It is important that the people working within the industry provide high quality financial statements and always pay close attention to ethical concerns that may arise. Since ethics is such a major concern in the accounting industry, a rules based system is in place for enforcing ethical concerns. There are many regulating bodies that exist that enforce many highly detailed regulations that people within the industry must follow at all times. Throughout history there have been several major accounting scandals that have been followed by new regulation to ensure that these problems do not come up again. CLERP 9 and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are just a couple of acts that have caused significant changes to the accounting world in recent times. This paper will look at some of the different issues that accountants face as well as some of the regulations that seek to end unethical behavior. Ethical Standards in Accounting Introduction The accounting industry is an always changing and constantly growing industry. Accounting plays a vital role in society and business and up until recently accounting was considered to have some of the highest standards for ethical and moral conduct in business. In recent years there have been many high profile business failures caused by the unethical behavior or accountants and accounting firms. Since some major companies, like Enron...
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...literature review observes the views of organizational design and business ethics as they relate to one another in business. The first portion of this paper defines organizational design and business ethics to establish their importance and also examines managerial ethics and corporate social responsibility, sources of ethical principles. The second portion pursues to explain the relationship between business ethics and organizational design and how managers shape ethics through use of value-based leadership and formal structure systems. The third portion pursues to review the importance of ethics to organizational design and the structures that support or enforce ethical behavior in organizations. The fourth portion links literature reviewed and published over the past few years together based on their reference to ethics and organizational design. The literatures are linked together based on commonalities found in the opinions of the authors relating to a spiritual perspective, ethics and corporate structure, organizational and ethical theories, and ethical strategy. Last but not least, the review concludes with a summary of the important role that ethics plays in the organizational design and structure of a business and how it applies to members of management. Keywords: business ethics, organizational design, corporate social responsibility Outline INTRODUCTION I. Organizational Design/Business Ethics A. This will be a review of the relationship between different...
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...Sales-Ethics an Oxymoron? Globalization highlighted the ethical issues and concerns for every individual organization, multinational organizational conduct their operations under ethical code of conduct to confine the issues faced by unethical conducts. Many organizations such as pharmaceutical firms, technological firms and financial firms pay more attentions to ethical behavior to ensure the sales to consumers have been impeccably ethical. However managers pay attention to behavioral ethical conducts that ensure the professional attitude of sales force towards consumers/customers (Chen & Tang, 2006, 69). Recent unethical conducts by Enron and WorldCom highlighted the attention for sales and ethical behavior, because unethical conduct and sales ethics can ruin the whole organization wide reputation (McDevitt et al, 2007, 73). Business ethics is counter stone for doing business in industry that however considered by every single organization, which eventually encourages every single business entity to develop the organization’s processes based on ethical conducts. Business ethics and sales ethics both entails the same meaning because ultimately salesperson engages in the business activity to generate profits for business, but on contrary “business ethics” and “sales ethics” have no contradiction in associations. Sales ethics on the other hand have some stereotype meaning because business and sales people are not always ethical; leaving us with a dilemma that indicates the sales...
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... Establishing principles for ethical behavior frequently starts with a policy on ethics. Businesses acquire a policy on ethics to guide their measures and to set up a general meaning of correct versus incorrect. According to the American Library Association, code of ethics is a handbook for suitable behavior (2012). Given the corporate ethical breaches in recent times, assess whether or not you believe that the current business and regulatory environment is more conducive to ethical behavior. Provide support for your answer Existing businesses and regulatory environment is more conductive behavior because some companies and managers feel as though they can get away with it. The unpredictable increase and collapse of the Enron Company set off a long-burning fire under the American social conscience. From every crevasse and corner, voices rose demanding increased accountability, demanding tighter regulation, and demanding that the unethical be brought to justice. Clearly, in such estimation, those at fault should have been punished. In order for ethical principles to apply to such industries, it must be shown that they are inherently moral or ethically responsible institutions. Secondly, an adequate discussion of what business ethics is just be provided before we can truly investigate why the situation does not conform to those standards. Third, the role of those same ethical standards must be explained with business content. Fourth, recent societal preventative...
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...do business. The advancement in technology has offered new ideas for businesses to monitor employee progress and standards.. Companies need to implement supreme standards that promote unity, coherence, and co-operation between fundamental organizational proceedings and ethical codes of conduct. They need to utilize accessible technology to allow for the corporation to demonstrate and enforce moral and ethical standards with more ease. Upholding strict standards of ethics is what fosters common belief and practice in other morals such as responsibility, honesty, trust, and equality for all. Organizations are each unique in their operations, and therefore they will need to create a code of conduct best suited to their specific demands. This will allow the employees to have clearer cut guidelines to be able to better evaluate their actions in different scenarios. This is not always fool proof; it can still be taxing at times to enforce even ethical standards that are established. Ethical codes set the foundation for all business proceedings, relations, and revenue. In the company’s ethical code it should establish guidelines for topics such as use of internet/company electronics, customer interaction, general conduct, employee relations, and social expectations of employees and the organization as a whole. There are more and more organization that uses technology to monitor their employee communication and their productivity. Technology helps establish ethical standards in...
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...subject, we are trying to find out how ethical behaviors or values have change from their prior generations to current generations. Anna interviewed two people in her company, “Enbridge Pipeline Inc”, she chose an employee that has been there for 50 years (Employee A) and another employee that has been in the workforce for less than 5 years (Employee B). When we interview both employees regarding question #7 (refer to Appendix 1), we found ethical behavior or value has change quite dramatically over time. Employee A is an accountant and when he start working, there was certain procedures they need to follow but not as strict as the standards implement today. He remembers their procedure to reconcile certain account was just by looking at the ending balance to make sure there was no huge number was recorded then no reconciliations were required. Over time there was more requirements to reconcile certain accounts for external and internal audit. After the Sarbanes-Oxley Act implementation in 2002 due to Enron fiasco and many others, everyone was concentrated on reconciling all their accounts, providing an ethical procedures and ensuring all transactions have audit trail. To efficiently perform all those tasks, organization eventually switches from paper copy to electronic database, this help organization to produce effective, efficient, and ethical results. Employee B has been in the workforce less than 5 years but she was train the new standards that were implemented to help prevent...
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...BUSI610: Organization Design and Business Ethics Mitzi N. Harvey Liberty University Abstract This literature review examines the concepts of business ethics and how it is related to the organizational design of a corporation. The first section of this review defines the concepts of business ethics and organizational design to establish their meaning and use throughout this paper. The second aspect of understanding the relationship between business ethics and organizational design comes from understanding how and/or why ethics is important to organizational design. This will illustrate any underlying influences ethics has on business structure and design. The third section of this paper reviews and groups the literature found linking ethics and organizational design. Literature is grouped together based on the similarities found in authors’ opinions, research and/or results. The next section discusses the ideas of micro and macro ethics; first defining them, illustrating the differences and then explaining how they come into play when examining the link between ethics and design. The following sections of the review, provides examples of formal organizational structures, ethical programs, and the ethical decisions that impacted them. Finally, in the conclusion of the review it summarizes the relationship between business ethics and organizational design, how this relationship impacts business, and what this means for business managers. Introduction To sustain...
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...Ethical and Socially Responsive Business I believe that every company should encourage a relationship of trust, loyalty, honesty, and responsibility among staff members at all levels. It’s important that each staff member works together to achieve excellence in a business, so the code of conduct is put in place. The purpose of the code is to provide guidance and set common ethical standards for employees from the top of the food chain to the bottom of the food chain. Some of the areas that I find to be significant of importance in a business are sexual harassment, discrimination and simply being professional in a work environment. Sexual Harassment Prohibited Chipotle wants to provide a safe and positive working environment for all employees, whether male or female. Sexual harassment will not be tolerated, it’s a unwelcome verbal or non-verbal sexual advance, requests for sexual favors, other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, it is considers a from of discrimination based on gender. The law prohibits sexual harassment by supervisor’s coworkers and even people who are not employees of the company. The company has a duty to keep their workplace free of harassment. Discrimination Prohibited Chipotle strongly believes that employees and applicants for employment should be treated without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity...
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...NIKE From Sweatshops to Leadership HRM 522 June 12, 2011 Global businesses can sometimes be difficult due to the different cultures. Not all cultures carry the same value, law and ethical standard. Nike is an international brand that has many retail accounts in over 160 countries. Being an international company can cause business ethical and legal issues. Integrity is important and sometimes a challenge when a corporation must respond to criticism or hold back on certain company details. Nike dealt with criticism from right activist, media, and face labor rights violations. However, over a period of time and after making some important adjustments; Nike is working on improving its company image. Nike used traditional advertising methods to broadcast its product. Nike public relations tactics dealt with the wage policy, visiting campuses on universities, personal letters, corporate responsibility and using celebrities as spoke person for its product. Nike launch campaigns regarding child labor, low and non- existent wages. Nike believes that the U.S dollars were meaningless because the cost of living was different in other countries. Nike held press conferences for newspaper staff at colleges. These were ways for Nike to make proactive efforts to address the concerns of activists protesting against their products. Nike made a few mistakes in handling the negative publicity. Three...
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...BUSI610: Organization Design and Business Ethics Mitzi N. Harvey Liberty University Abstract This literature review examines the concepts of business ethics and how it is related to the organizational design of a corporation. The first section of this review defines the concepts of business ethics and organizational design to establish their meaning and use throughout this paper. The second aspect of understanding the relationship between business ethics and organizational design comes from understanding how and/or why ethics is important to organizational design. This will illustrate any underlying influences ethics has on business structure and design. The third section of this paper reviews and groups the literature found linking ethics and organizational design. Literature is grouped together based on the similarities found in authors’ opinions, research and/or results. The next section discusses the ideas of micro and macro ethics; first defining them, illustrating the differences and then explaining how they come into play when examining the link between ethics and design. The following sections of the review, provides examples of formal organizational structures, ethical programs, and the ethical decisions that impacted them. Finally, in the conclusion of the review it summarizes the relationship between business ethics and organizational design, how this relationship impacts business, and what this means for business managers. Introduction To sustain...
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...Organizational theory and behavior are a vital part of any organization and can be a critical area that determines an organizations success in any industry. If and how these concepts are uniquely applied, organizations can define many different areas of their organizational structure. The Starbucks Corporation has become a well-known globally successful company. In analyzing the application of the organizational behaviors of communication, culture, and decision making, we can determine how these concepts have made this corporation successful. Organizational Communication Communication in the Starbucks organization is exceptionally successful. In order to appear transparent as an organization, provide sound direction of communication, maintain solid channels of communication, and still the rumor-mill; Starbucks has taken immense strides in concentrating on this aspect of its organizational behavior. Although Starbucks goes to no great lengths to define or list their organizational structure (Hawks, Kembell, Kembell, Olsen, & Perry, 2002), Recent changes in the organization define the organization as a matrix structure (Shultz, 2008). These changes in the organization, done to improve the customer experience, helped define the communication directions used by the organization. George and Jones (2005), state that the matrix organizational structure is a very effective way to take full advantage of all communication channels. Whether the organization wishes to label the organizational...
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...Business Failure in Enron and The Organizational Behavior Theories That Explain the Company’s Failure Name: Institutional Affiliation Enron Corporation was one of the world’s top electricity corporations that underwent a financial indignity, which involved Enron and its bookkeeping company. The scandal comprised of the detection of unbalanced accounting techniques, which occurred through the 1990s. This resulted in Enron filing for insolvency in December of 2001 (Thomas, 2002). The aim of this paper is to define how organizational behavior theories could have anticipated or illuminated Enron’s failures. Organizational behavior, is described as an area of study that explores the influence that groups, individuals, and structure have on performance inside the organizations for the aim of applying such information toward refining an organizations efficiency; precisely organizational behavior concentrates on how to increase output; decrease absenteeism, turnover and unusual workplace conduct; and raise organizational loyalty behavior and job fulfillment (Robbins & Judge, 2007). The key players of any business are senior management, board of directors, in-house auditors and external auditors. In case of Enron, all the stakeholders were unsuccessful in playing their parts. Enron failure was mainly because of Enron’s managerial team trying to make an enterprise which would raise riches amongst their owners. Nevertheless, when it was exposed that Enron’s stock prices were less...
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...University of Phoenix Material Key Terms Ethical Terms Character: Moral actions based on duty-driven ethical principles. These include trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship (Josephson Institute, 2009). Ethical System: Underlying ethical principles, which a person uses to make decisions Ethics: “The principles, norms, and standards of conduct governing an individual or organization” (Treviño & Nelson, 2011, p. 17); ethics form the basis for determining the correct action, or moral behavior, in a particular situation. Morals: Actions based on one’s underlying ethical principles Values: Those things or actions upon which the individual or organization spends time and money Ethical Systems Duty-based: A moral obligation or commitment to act in a certain manner, with clear right and wrong being determined by an outside authority Entitlement-based: Moral decisions are based entirely on what is in the best interest of the individual, regardless of relationships, the needs of others, or business. Goal-based: Focuses on the outcome or final purpose, which may be localized, as in business, or universal, as in feeding all the hungry children in the world Humanistic (secular humanism or human nature ethics): Beliefs based on the extremes of human behavior, both good and bad, without the direction of an outside authority Relativistic: Relativism often uses the personalized approach to ethics. It is subjective and focuses...
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...Running Head: Business Ethics Main Title: The Cultural Dimensions of Business Ethic Monroe College Contents Rationale 3 Introduction 3 Some Factors which may Influence Business Ethics 3 How Peoples Action can Affect Business Ethics 4 How Structure Affects Business ethics 4 How Culture, Norms and Laws Affect Business Ethics 5 Unethical Practices and How They May Affect a Business 5 Recommendations 7 Conclusion 8 Sources 10 Rationale The purpose of this paper is to discuss and address cultural aspects of business ethics. It will also examine how these cultural aspects may affect businesses and shape societies view on these organizations. Recommendations will also be made for example, on the aspect of setting companies policy while taking morals and ethical matters into consideration. Introduction Ethics is a huge area of interest, study and debate. According to Dictionary.com, Ethics is a body of moral principles or values governing or distinctive of a particular culture or group. Business ethics can be described as the behavior that a business adheres to in its daily interactions with society .The ethical standards of a business can be examined by looking into the firm’s human rights policy, its regulations of bribery and corruption, and its execution and compliance of its codes of ethics. The ethical standards of business can vary significantly depending on the country it is headquartered in. These standards apply not only...
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