Creating codes of ethics for Ford Motor Company.


Codes of ethics are frequently considered to be characteristic of several professions, as opposed to trade and craft associations. These rules of conduct are especially common in business organizations and health care settings, where they set guiding principle on how the professionals ought to behave in dealing with their clients. Codes of ethics are usually enforced through the top hierarchy of an organization or company capable of imposing sanction, such as suspension or withdrawal of an employee due unethical behavior. Codes of ethics are today becoming more extensively adopted by a number of companies as well as organizations. This is because most of these organizations and companies seek to guarantee the public that their members strictly adhere to ethical guidelines in their practices. This paper discusses the creation of novel codes of ethics for Ford Motor Company.

Background of Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an automaker corporation headquartered in the United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and later incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition, Ford is the fourth largest automaker company in the world today. In 2007, the company fell from 2nd to 3rd place in United States annual automobile sales, behind Toyota and General Motors. Being a multinational company, its the second largest automaker corporation in the whole of Europe, just behind Volkswagen, with sales exceeding those in the US and hefty markets in countries, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy. The company produced a monstrous 5,532 million automobiles in 2008, and employed approximately 213, 000 workers in its affiliate facilities and plants around the world. Furthermore, in 2007 this automaker company received extra initial awards of quality survey from J. D Power  Associates than any automaker company. 5 of its automobiles were ranked at top in their categories and 14 vehicles were as well ranked in top three .

Mission Statement
Ford Motor Company being a global leader in automotive industry in terms of their services and products, its mission statement should reflect this enormity. Therefore, the mission statement of this multinational company should be to continually improve their services and products for customer needs. This will enable the company to meet the requirements of its customers, permitting prosperity and offering logical returns to both stakeholders and company owners.

Core Values
Since this is a profit intended company, its core values should include people, products, and profits. In the ethical codes, Ford Motor Company ought to value people, as these people will act as a source of strength for its prosperity. They will as well offer corporate intelligence as well as determining the vitality and reputation of the company. Product will be the result of the companys efforts and therefore should depict the companys quality for customer appreciation. Finally, profit should act as a sturdy measure of their efficiency to customers. Thus, the company ought to offer the best to its customers to realize profit in order to survive and grow in the industry.

Guiding Principles
When creating codes of ethics for such enormous companies in the world, an individual ought to ensure that they include the guiding principles, values, statements of mission for the company. 
These components make the backbone of an organization or company. The codes of ethics created must promote ethical corporate culture of the company as well as addressing the generic employee conduct in the workplace. Therefore, the guiding principles of Ford Motor Company should be first, adherence to quality of their automobile products. This will be aimed at achieving the customer satisfaction for their products and services. Creating this guiding principle will enable the company to have an advantage in the automakers market, thus improving on their competitive advantage together with augmented revenue collection. Continuous improvement and innovation ought to be another guiding principle for this multinational automaker corporation. This means that, by Ford Motor Company embracing this particular principle excellence will be automatically inevitable in this competitive industry. Continuous improvement and innovation principle will as well enable the company to cope with ever escalating competitiveness in the industry and thus realizing considerable profit. Besides, other guiding principles of Ford Motor Company must include employee involvement in the companys decision making, as it should run as a team and treat each and every individual with respect and much needed trust. Integrity of the company should never be compromised in any way. This will ensure that the companys conduct subscribes to the social responsibility and respect for humanity.

Purposes of Codes of Ethics
The codes of ethics created for Ford Motor Company are intended to focus the general employees and directors of the company on ethic risks, offer guidance to assist in identifying and dealing with ethical issues, offering mechanisms to report unethical conduct. These codes of ethics will also assist in fostering a culture of accountability and honesty. Therefore, when created, employees and directors of Ford Motor Company ought to comply with them by embracing their demands for the betterment of the company. However, no policy or code is able to anticipate each and every situation that may perhaps arise, especially in such vast companies. According to these codes of ethics, employees and directors will be encouraged to bring questions concerning certain situations not provided in the codes.

Training and Education
The codes of ethics will put in place a program which will permit vocational and technical student to acquire on job training. This program will be anticipated to produce new technicians for the company, who are trained and equipped with the fundamental skills, knowledge, and experience to foster the productivity and efficiency of the company. This provision in the ethical codes will as well enable the technicians to acquire more skills, thus developing their career in prospect life.

Definitions
Conflict of interest may take place when employees interests are adverse to or may perhaps seem to be detrimental to the interests of the company. In the new codes, Fords employees with directors included will be required to avoid the conflict of interests between themselves and the company. Any circumstance that will involve or anticipated to entail a clash of interest between employees and Ford Motor Company ought to be disclosed promptly to the management. Confidentiality, this is defined as employees sharing companys confidential information with either other employees or departments of the company. It as well comprises workers sharing companys information with individuals outside the company. The codes of ethics will be crystal clear on this issue, as all employees will be required to uphold the confidentiality of the companys information entrusted to them. The ethical codes will ensure that companys information will only be disclosed to public when authorized or officially mandated by the management.

Unethical behaviors are behaviors that are strictly forbidden by the companys ethical codes. It includes bribes or kickbacks, sharing companys confidential information together with falsification of employment documents. These created ethical codes will encourage workers of this automakers company to report any unethical behavior depicted by either their colleagues or even directors. Additionally, directors will be in position of helping the company by fostering ethical behavior as provided in these novel ethical codes. Directors will have to do this by encouraging the junior workers to report any doubtful action in a given situation to their managers, supervisors, and correct personnel for immediate action to be taken.

Implementation and Communication
All employees of Ford Motor Company will have to strictly adhere to created ethical codes. Any suspected infringement, violation, and breach of these codes will be promptly reported to the companys management, following which, investigations will be carried out. After investigation, proper action will be taken including suspension and sacking of employees in the event of code violation. Any alterations and amendments of these ethical codes will be timely posted on the Ford Motor Companys website, for the benefit of its employees and those affiliated to it.

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