Certain Level Of Ethical Behavior In Order example essay topic

INTRODUCTION Ethics is a very important aspect of the business world. The most important place to apply ethics is in the Human Resource function. When applied to business, ethics is generally defined as: The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession. This definition leaves many holes in which it is solely the employer's responsibility to fill. To me ethics is a very important thing. I believe that all businesses should be run under a strict guideline of ethical procedures.

When applying this term to the business world I would personally define it as: The rules and standards an employer uses to guide the direction of their employees. By this I am saying that the ethics an employer enforces will determine how any given employee will perform every function involved in going about their day to day business. Loose ethics will translate into decisions being based solely on the bottom line, without taking any external factors into consideration. On the other hand, having ethical guidelines that are to strict may cause workers performance to decline. It is very important that each employer look very closely at their business and decide how these rules and standards should be enforced. There are many reasons why ethics should be important in our everyday lives.

They are important in academic life because there is so little guidance for college students. Students have the freedom to make their own decisions. Whether to go out on a Thursday night and miss class on Friday is a personal decision, but deciding whether to not study and go out can lead to an ethical dilemma. By not studying a person may be inclined to cheat or cut corners. This is when a person with good ethics will do their best on their own.

A person with loose ethics may cheat. This behavior will facilitate into the professional world. A person who cheated their way through college may be inclined to act in the same manner in the work place. Ethical behavior in the professional world is just as important as in academic life. How you act in the work place will directly affect individual job performance as well as how well the company's workers are getting along. A single individual and their actions could easily affect a whole company in a negative manner.

Ethics play an equally important role in other situations such as politics, student organizations, and labor unions. All of these areas require a certain level of ethical behavior in order to operate in an appropriate manner. Essentially, without ethics no organization would be able to operate in a productive manner for any extended amount of time. It would simply fall apart on top of itself due to the behavior of the people that make it up. ARTICLES PROFESSORS WHO SEE NO EVIL The key issue in the article is that students today are not being taught the proper way ethics should apply. They are being taught that right and wrong depend solely on individual values and culture, when in reality right is always right and wrong will always be wrong.

From an ethics stand point it is up to the professors to convey this message effectively. BIG LABOR'S ENRON The problem stated in this article has to do with insider trading. Senior officers were setting the new price of their own stocks. This raises plenty of ethical issues, as well as legal ones. The main problem here is that the senior officers should not be able to set their own stock price. Furthermore, during the November stock buyback they restricted who could sell their stock back.

This is a perfect example of insider trading. SUNBEAM- CHAINSAW AL This article showcases how greed can become an ethical issue. Al Dunlap was the CEO of a major Company. In order to make his job performance appear to be outstanding and to enhance his own personal wealth he orchestrated an accounting scheme that made profits appear to be higher than they were. This is an extremely unethical thing to do. Not only is it bad for the company and the people who work for it, it also will effect the millions of shareholders negatively.

CITY BANK / AT&T This article is not complete. An employee of Salomon Smith Barney named Jack Grumman changed his rating on AT&T stock in order to bring their business to his firm. This is extremely unethical. The information he changed, for his companies gain as well as his personal gain, is used by people when deciding where to invest. So instead of steering people away from a stock that they had said was not a very good one, they were telling people to buy. Again an example of a person trying to gain at the expense of others.

LT. COLONEL TWITTY There are two main ethical issues at hand in this article. First, Twitty never should have lied about what had happened to his cruiser. Honesty between an employer and employees is key to being successful. Second, the people pushing for prosecution of Caucasian employees are now asking investigators to back off Twitty because of race. This is a double standard and it would be wrong to loosen rules for one race over another.

HIGH PROFILES IN TROUBLE There is one thing I want to point out about this article. That is: All of the people on this list were doing things in order to gain personally and to make themselves look good to the outside world. The more I learn the more I realize that greed or personal satisfactions are the greatest factor when looking at most ethics issues. This is why HR plays such a key role in the business world.

It is up to HR to hire quality workers from the mailroom to the top floor. TYCO This example shows how unethical behavior can have a snowball affect in a company. The CEO is acting unethically in some of his business practices. In order to keep his secret he bribes other employees to keep quiet. So now one person's unethical behavior has turned into multiple people acting unethically. Once again, the illegal actions were caught and the company and its investors were hurt.

LITIGATION INC. This is a slightly more difficult article to judge. Lawyers are "price gouging" clients in a way. While they do the work and plead the case, clients are not getting much in the way of settlements while the lawyer is making off with all of the money. The main ethical question here though is, when is enough enough.

When do the lawyers stop suing? It is a matter of ethics. MY POLICIES I believe very firmly that success of a company will depend greatly on the ethics it instills in its employees. Although I will agree that in the short run an unethical company would succeed. If I were running the HR department I would start off by having a very clear and thorough mission statement. This is the basis on which your long term goals will be reached.

The next thing I would do is to make sure every employee receives a copy of all local, state, and national laws concerning ethical behavior, as well as literature involving company policies. They would be discussed briefly in orientation, but at the same time I would stress their importance. Then the employees would be informed of how our company handles ethical issues. Every employee now has access to our mission statement, laws on ethics, and company policies. I would set up an ethics committee and explain to employees that any behavior or actions that may be in violation of any ethical guideline given to them will be brought before the committee. It is there that an employee can defend him / herself.

The ethics committee will then deliberate and decide what course of action will be best for each individual situation. The committee will be made up of represenitives from all divisions of the company and will be culturally diverse. This is a very vague idea of a system that I believe would be fair and allow to the employees to act as they wish, knowing that there are standards to follow and that it is important to do the right thing all the time..