Ethical issues in the business environment

Ethical issues have existed in the business world since day one. In the very early days, before currency, we witness the most pure form of business transactions. This is when an individual possessed a trade or skill and offered their time and energy as an investment to another individual. This process was named, “The Barter System”. This system still exists today and allows individuals to trade skills in efforts to fulfill their personal needs. As time evolved, and individuals witnessed that not all trades were equal, parties involved started to use a form of currency to balance out the trade in progress. From this point, ethical issues advanced in the business field, and unfortunately have not stopped expanding. What happens when two individuals enter into an agreement of transaction and there is no mediator? Is it possible that one party might take advantage of the other by simply noticing the demand of their needs? (Travino, 2007) Lets us go into three areas where business ethical issues exist today in my organization and community.

Ethical issues that exist in my community today are many. I have chosen to unravel three of them that affect me on a day-to-day basis. Let me begin with the mismanagement of time. When a company is literally buying an individual’s time for an hourly wage, and that individual is not fulfilling the obligation from which is being paid for, is huge in my organization. For an example, an 8 hour work day of labor is being traded for an allotted amount of money. Agreeing to these terms means that both parties have entered into a binding agreement that for 8 hours of their labor and time, the company, in return, agrees to pay “X” amount of dollars. For some reason, the individual will become comfortable, and after a certain amount of time, they feel that they personally can alter the contract by choosing how much time they actually pay forward to the company, while the company is still in binding agreement to a lot the same amount of compensation. The stealing of time that is being paid for is a huge overhead and creates a burden to the company’s survival. Unfortunately it does not stop there. Company supplies, such as pencils, paper, and tape, although very small, are constantly being taken from the company’s inventory. Shrinkage is a huge problem in business today, unfortunately, it created an equation in the final biding numbers that a company can offer in efforts to retain a profit. The last area that I would like to touch on is the maintaining of equipment. It is the challenge of a company to expect an individual to maintain the company’s equipment when that individual will not even maintain their own personal belonging. I feel in this case, that this is somewhat preventable by the interviewing tactics used by the employer. If interview question are geared towards the maintenance of the individuals personal belonging, the employer can receive good feedback on how this person will respect the equipment of the company.

I feel that ethics in the business world are a reflection of ethics that an individual possess in their own life. Most clichés sum it up; “You get what you paid for”, “Stewart over little will become master over much”, “What comes around, goes around”, and “Treat other as you want to be treated”. Unfortunately employers need to invest time, money and energy into the background of the future hired help, simply because their word is not good enough to ensure a wise hiring decision. This extra cost is then forwarded to the consumer and just continues to circulate in the efforts of staying in business. Employees remain a company’s biggest overhead. This financial burden could be minimized if ethical training was enforced in our nation’s youth, where it all begins!
Reference
Trevino, L. K. (2007). Straight Talk About How To Do It Right (4th ed.). []. doi: Retrieved from