...Ethical Decision Making Ethics are principles that define behavior as fair and proper and they are concerned with how a moral person should behave when it comes to making an ethical decision (Josephson Institute of Ethics, 2002). Evaluating and deciding among competing options is often key in making a fair choice since principles do not always dictate a single "moral" course of action. The decision of whether to lay off workers to enhance profits or to cut corners on quality to meet a deadline are examples of some choices regarding ethics business owners may face (Poznak Law Firm, 2003). The use of extremely low-wage foreign workers, like in the Nike organization case, is a current concern and the subject is a complex one. There are many valid differences of opinion regarding what constitutes ethical behavior and how ethical decisions should be made and the subject is a complex one (Poznak Law Firm, 2003). There are always pros and cons involved with any choice and the decision itself can be quite time consuming. When it comes to deciding whether or not to use cheap labor to cut costs, businesses must examine the ethics behind their decision-making processes. Four approaches that business owners commonly use to analyze ethical dilemmas are the utilitarian approach, which focuses on taking the action that will result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people; the moral rights approach, which is concerned with moral principles, regardless of the consequences;...
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...Discussion Week 1 What is the difference between morals and ethics in the workplace? Might something be ethical but immoral? What about unethical but moral? Which is more important to an organization, to be ethical or moral? Why? Morals and ethics relates to individual character, ethics, and morals but also applied in business world. Ethics stresses a social systems to which application of morals that influences ethical behavior at work whereas morality consists of rules of human behavior and specifies that certain behavior or actions are wrong or immoral and others are right or moral (De George, 2010). The decision’s one makes, whether it is for personal or professional reasons falls into either an ethical or moral decision making category. Morals define personal character. Moral decisions are based upon the beliefs of the individual while ethical decisions are guidelines, standards, and laws that affect the business professional’s decision-making process. In an ethical climate, people are held accountable and decisions are made based on what is in the best interest of the company or its employees and not what nets the greater financial gain for an individual at the expense of the company’s ethical fiber. Issues that arise in business can sometimes be ethical but immoral or vice versa. Business organizations face ethical and moral decisions daily. Ethics in business are central in the organization as it provides standards that form the moral integrity of the company. Effective...
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...Ethical dilemmas are common issues that every businessman has to face at their working environment. It is not such an easy task for businessman to have an ethical decision making, to choose what the “right” thing to do. In this following factual scenario, John also has to face some ethical dilemmas in his working environment and have difficulty to find appropriate solution. After a brief summary of the facts, I will discuss some ethical dilemmas which John is confronting and some approaches to ethical reasoning. John is a Patient Accounts Manager of Greensburg Hospital with responsibility to monitor the charges which accrue to a patient’s account while the patient is hospitalized. He discovers an unusual bill listed on a patient’s account without charged. This patient is Izzy Indigent, who is an unemployed Medicaid one and she has been hospitalized for several day. She gave her children the supply of body lotion, soap, toothpaste, mouthwash, and Kleenex in the hospital when they come to visit her daily and asked for refilling on the next day. John asked the supervising nurse and received the answer that she knew about it but let it go. The prognosis is that the hospitalization of Ms. Indigent will last several more weeks. In this situation, John has to face an ethical dilemma which is whether his personal value system are versus his professional responsibiities, whether he should keep silent about the charges on Indigent’s account or he should report it accurately and truthfully...
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...Business ethics 1. Assignment 1: Questions 1) Analyzing the ethical frameworks needed in decision making, which ones best align to the eight ethical principles of the Global Business Standards of Codex. Without doubt, there always exists a dilemma when company decisions are being made. It is for this reason that ethical frameworks are utilized to ensure that appropriate decisions are made in the organization. Ethics.ubc argues that ethical frameworks act like “snake detectors.” They are there to ensure that “snakes” in the organization are easily recognized before they bite. In layman’s language, they offer guidance when making decisions. Some of the ethical frameworks put forward include: * The utilitarian approach * Rights approach * Fairness approach * Common good approach * Virtue approach Utilitarian approach This approach basically focuses on the consequences of a particular action (capsim.com). For example, it considers whether an action will eventually lead to greater good than other related actions. Therefore, the most ethical decision to be made will be that which will offer maximum benefits. Rights approach In this approach, the most ethical decision to be made will have utmost respect and protection for human rights (capism.com). In this case, people have the right to make their own decisions and everyone ought to be respected in the decisions they make. Fairness approach Just as the name suggests, fairness...
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...Ethical Role of the Manager In a broad construction of the ethical role of the manager, managing and leading can be said to be inherently ethics-laden tasks because every managerial decision affects either people or the natural environment in some way—and those effects or impacts need to be taken into consideration as decisions are made. A narrower construction of the ethical role of the manager is that managers should serve only the interests of the shareholder; that is, their sole ethical task is to meet the fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder wealth that is embedded in the law, predominantly that of the United States, although this point of view is increasingly accepted in other parts of the world. Even in this narrow view, however, although not always recognized explicitly, ethics are at the core of management practice. The ethical role of managers is broadened beyond fiduciary responsibility when consideration is given to the multiple stakeholders who constitute the organization being managed and to nature, on which human civilization depends for its survival. Business decisions affect both stakeholders and nature; therefore, a logical conclusion is that those decisions have ethical content inherently and that managerial decisions, behaviors, and actions are therefore inherently ethical in nature. Whenever there are impacts due to a decision, behavior, or action that a leader or manager makes, there are ethical aspects to that decision or situation. While some skeptics...
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...1. Peter Singer and Joseph DesJardins have some important discussion about decision-making. Even though they have different approaches in making decisions, both of their ideas focus on ethical choices. In Ivan Boesky’s Choice, Peter Singer mentioned ultimate choice and restricted choice. While restricted choices are made more often in daily life, ultimate choices are made when one is facing a decision that can benefit himself or can go against his ethical values. In my understanding, restricted choices are decisions that can be made without thinking critically or be done with some consideration. These choices are often made by a person’s interest. The decision, whether is good or bad, cannot affect the other’s interests. For example, a student chooses chemistry to study even though she doesn’t enjoy this subject. Although her decision might result in a lower grade in this course, it will not affect her classmates. On the other hand, ultimate choices are decisions that can affect not only a person’s interest, but also the others’. Unlike making restricted decisions, a person has to think critically and carefully before the ultimate decisions are made about the consequences. If a person respects his ethical values, it’s likely for him to make a good decision. If he decides to benefit himself, he might make a bad choice, and it might result in unpredicted consequences. For example, the same student who picked chemistry, and at this moment, she is having a really hard time. The...
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...[Type the company name] | Creating an Ethical Organization | | Business Ethics | Saurabh | How to Create an Ethical Workplace? Ethics in the workplace are vital, even to small business owners. No company wants to be known as unethical, and employees are more apt to display higher morale and more productivity when they know they are working for a morally sound company. It is important to create a conscientious workplace that is transparent, both to employees as well as the general public. Small business owners should never tolerate inappropriate behavior in an employee and employees should be properly trained on what is considered unethical and ethical. * Set an example for your workforce. In order for employees to behave in an ethical manner, they need to know that they are working for a moral boss. They will be much less likely to display signs of unethical behavior if they know that this type of behavior will not be tolerated or ignored. * Create a policy dealing with ethics. This company policy should state your expectations for your employees as well as outline what is and is not considered acceptable. Having a clearly written policy will help you take action should an employee act unethically. * Allow employees to report unethical behavior in a safe environment. No one enjoys ratting out a fellow employee, particularly if it will be made known who turned the person in. Give your employees a safe and anonymous way to air their complaints so...
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...today’s world, business decisions are involved in everything that people do. In homes, on the job, and in everyday transactions, business is in one way or another applied. These decisions may be based on finances, personal beliefs, power, or even on greed. Due to these many reasons, it is very important that businesses use a set of rules or guidelines in helping them to make the right decisions. It seems that a different company or organization is on television every other day because they have been caught using unethical measures in their business. In applying an ethical decision model, companies can cut down on making decisions, which can hinder their companies in a negative way, now and also in the future. Applying ethics in the form of a decision model is no replacement for morals or for business leadership, but it gives guidelines to follow, and identifies which problems actually need to be addressed and offers various ways to solve them (Sternberg, pg. 112). The decision model helps to organize the information in a way that is more productive in solving the problem in the right way. Through analyzing ethical decision models a number of ethical issues can be solved quite well, and with good grace. The following ethical decision models will help illustrate the importance if using these rules and guidelines. Sternberg’s ethical decision model is based on five steps. Step one is to clarify the questions, which is very important in tackling all ethical business problems. Many...
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...& Reasoning Ethical business practices include assuring that the highest legal and moral standards are observed in your relationships with the people in your business community. This includes the most important person in your business and your customer. Ethical decision making in today's business and personal world, ethical decisions are made on a daily basis. Most of these decisions are based on company ground rules. The others are based on personal ground rules. All decisions can have a number of ground rules that help us determine whether our decision is ethical or unethical. In the following paragraphs I will discuss the impacts of ethics on decision making. Ethics is a standard that tells us how we should behave. It is based on moral duty and includes a code of values that guides our choices and actions. No person with a strong character lives without such a code. A reputation for ethical decisions builds trust in your business among business associates and suppliers. Strong supplier relationships are critical to a successful business. Consider the problems you might have if you could not supply what the customer needs at the time that they need it. The entrepreneur is the role model for myself in my future success. If your behavior includes lying to customers, taking money out of the cash register, or taking home some of the inventory or supplies, you cannot be surprised if your employees follow your lead. Your family members may see the business as their own and...
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...February 13, 2011 Ethical Consideration 1. Identify and explain at least three Ethical considerations. “Ethics are the principles of conduct governing and individual or a group; specifically, the standards you use to decide what your conduct should be”(Dressler, 2008, p. 553). The leaders and management team of an organization are selected and expected to exhibit the highest level of ethical values. The Vice President for Health Services is certainly charged with ensuring that ethical practices are adhered. They are responsible for making sure that the decisions, policies, and procedures have an ethical foundation. Their primary focus is to make certain that the organization perform at optimum levels. Ethical consideration pertains to the right or wrong conduct based on morality. “Ethical behavior calls healthcare providers to conduct themselves in a manner that is beyond the demands of what is legal; it also asks them to behave in a manner that is ethical according to the guidelines of their profession” (Riley, 2011, p.1). Ethical principles are important all industries; however, the healthcare industry requires the highest level of ethics because people in this industry deal with situation and circumstances that affect another person’s life (Dogra, 2010). The three ethical consideration observed in the scenario was 1. The candidate revealed his potential disability, 2. The decision of whether to hire the candidate with the potential disability...
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...Behavioral Aspect of Accounting: The Need to Emphasize on Ethics ------------------------------------------------- Ahmad Zubair Chedi ------------------------------------------------- Abstract Accounting plays a vital role in providing information that permit economic decision, therefore the information has influence on its users. The financial statements that serve the basis for the economic decision are drawn up, not by the users, but by the enterprise’s accountants under the authority and control of the enterprise’s management. Ideally the preparers should take as their objective the fulfillment, (to the best of their ability) of the users’ needs. However the preparers have their own objectives, which often are quite different from those of the users. The financial statements can play a very important role in helping the enterprise’s management to achieve its objective. If the accounts show that the enterprise is doing well, the shareholders will be happy also the market price of the company’s shares will remain high. Since the accounts are prepared under the direction of the management there is a temptation for the management not to present the full truth about the enterprise in the financial statements, particularly when the company is doing badly. The paper examines the behavioral aspect of accounting with emphasis on the need of ethics; the methodology used is purely content analysis, using secondary data. The study reveals that unethical behavior is less...
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...on Business Ethics and Values * Identify the good, tragic, comic, satirical and farcical elements in the way in which people and organization deal with matters of ethics and morality * Stakeholder theory * Business case for business ethics * Arguments about the moral status of business and organization Moral conflict between self-interest and public duty, between social and environment duty what takes precedence? Should a business case be proven before an organization commit to appeal fund or should behave in a socially responsible way, beyond the requirement of law because it is the right thing to do? It would seem logical that a company would benefit from socially responsible conduct such as renewable resources, promoting fair trade, empowering gender fairness in employment and support the community in which they operate. However, the translation of benefits into economic profits is not guaranteed. For some consumers the buying decision is influenced by the social image of the company but by the value they get from the trade. Various factors can be employed to measure the corporate social responsibility performance are Dow Jones Sustainability Index, SERM rating and EIRIS. Stakeholder Theory: What responsibilities or obligation does an organization owes to its stakeholders? How should an organization cater to the competing need of different stakeholders? What legitimate interests justify a group of people being regarded as stakeholders? Business and...
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...philosophy concerned with the study of questions of right and wrong and how we ought to live. Ethics involves making moral judgments about what is right or wrong, good or bad. Right and wrong are qualities or moral judgments we assign to actions and conduct. Within the study of ethics, there are three branches: metaethics , concerned with methods, language, logical structure, and the reasoning used in the interpretation of ethical terms, for example, what exactly the term “good” means; normative ethics , concerned with ways of behaving and standards of conduct; and applied ethics , concerned with solving practical moral problems as they arise, particularly in the professions, such as medicine and law. Ethics provides us with a way to make moral choices when we are uncertain about what to do in a situation involving moral issues. In the process of everyday life, moral rules are desirable, not because they express absolute truth but because they are generally reliable guides for normal circumstances. Normative Ethics Normative ethics is fundamental to ethical decision making in the criminal justice system. A central notion in normative ethics is that one’s conduct must take into account moral issues; that is, one should act morally, using reason to decide the proper way of conducting oneself. Essentially, ethics, in prescribing certain standards of conduct, gives us a way of making choices in situations where we are unsure how to act. What are these standards of conduct and how do...
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...Tracy Davis LSTD3253 CST Final Project Ethical Dilemmas in Business It is almost impossible to pick up any American newspaper and avoid reading an article dealing with the unethical and possibly even illegal conduct of those who run our businesses. Whether it is insider stock manipulation, off balance sheet partnerships, questionable accounting practices, dumping of environmental contaminants, the stories continue to appear. The ethical conduct of U.S. businesses will be examined and compared with that of the past. The ethical climate has changed in the last couple of decades. Unethical conduct is nothing new to the business environment. Unethical practices didn’t necessarily bring a business down ten to twenty years ago, but unethical business practices today can lead to the premature death of a company. Companies such as Enron, Ford, Union Carbide and Johnson & Johnson have all had occasions where unethical practices have reared their ugly heads and each chose to handle things differently, with varying degrees of consequence. Each of these company’s bout with unethical behavior will be examined. In July of 1985 Houston Natural Gas merged with Inter North to form Enron, originally Natural Gas Pipeline Company. In 1989 Enron began trading natural gas commodities. In June 1994 Enron traded its first unit of electricity. In just 15 years, Enron grew from nowhere to be America’s seventh largest company, employing 21,000 staff in more than 40 countries...
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...ENSURING BUSINESS ETHICS The business world is changing. The increased awareness about long-term benefits of adopting a framework, based on ethical values, has forced business leaders to measure their decisions and actions against an ethical yardstick before taking them. This, combined with increased stress on values and principles, has made it more important for people like you and me to ensure that we make ethical decisions when faced with ethical dilemmas. Having knowledge of ethics is a pre-requisite for understanding ethical dilemmas. I make sure that I understand my company’s code of ethics and emphasis given by the company on ethical values. For this, I make it a point to sift through the document every three months. Ethical dilemma is a situation in which a person has to choose between two alternatives based on different values held dear by that person. There are different approaches to deal with ethical dilemmas: “Utilitarian”, “Deontological” and “Virtue ethics”. I value morals and principles more than consequences and thus, I adopt a deontological approach to ensure that I engage in ethical decision-making. However, having said that, I also take a holistic perspective to understand the effect of my decision on all the people involved. Deontologists always place values before consequences even if they are good. My life has been governed by values such as accountability, honesty, respect, and trust. Naturally, I consider these values more than others...
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