Ethics has no place in Business

Business ethics is the basic understanding that is being perceived by the employees for choosing the right or wrong. It prescribes the individuals behavior in the organization or the work place. Business ethics shows the type of behavior that an organization or a business entity should emulate and put more emphasis on, this shows the in written and unwritten values principles and codes that the organization should adopt.

In the current business world people are obsessed with some of the arrogant and irresponsible behaviors that are motivated by the need for profit maximization this is the most important function of any business for its stakeholders. The reason for all these mainly comes from the issue of psychological egoism. This theory does not necessarily mean that human beings are usually fond of behaving selfishly, but it on the other hand means that human beings are always striving towards the satisfaction of their own self-interest that are exclusive of the other partys interest (Alexie, 2006). Nowadays, the issues of compassion, love, friendship and the desire for social approval have become the least approved in the business setup.

It is seen that the markets will not operate without the ethical and moral behavior in the organization. The aspect of profit maximization for the benefit of the shareholders has become to be termed as an individualistic and unsustainable model in the business environment. This is because it ignores the aspect of fairness and justice that should be the basics of t he organization.

The stakeholders model suggests that the maximization of the wealth of the stakeholders should be the ultimate goal for the business, its corporations are supposed to be the managed to finally lead to the benefit of all the stakeholders who are mainly the employees, owners, suppliers, customers, and the communities (Alexie, 2006). This is seen as to being insufficient enough for its functions, because this model does not recognize sufficiently the issue of human beings as having a united consideration as compared to the reciprocal interest of their own.

There is a way that the organizations have gone too far to the extent of considering the employees as only the contributors of the bottom line and not as human beings that possess rights and responsibilities. In the contrary it treats human beings as a cannon fodder that can be used and discarded.

Technology is another issue that has been reflected so much on the issue of the ethics in business. This increase in the global communication of the information technology has led to the merging of the markets and thus allowing the financial institutions to be able to do their trading more easily and cheaply. This has led to the separation of the families due to the limited space for the reflection for the family. This is because people are left with a limited time for the family also less time to be able to contemplate for the family as the people are being caught up with the hysterical pace in the work place (Alexie, 2006).

According to the business ethics, it means that people should be loyal to the organization, but this is basically due to the main reason being the fear for the authorities. In addition to that in many societies, ethics is based on the religions system of the place. These religious systems differ from one society to another, and also in other areas they are not practiced and therefore have got little influence on how people behave and on other places that use the system there is a greater influence on their behaviors. Due to this factor, the business may not adapt them to their system of corporate management. Therefore there will be no use to adopt the ethics since they may have less or no impact on the organization.

The business morality is neutral therefore, the issue of the firm having a common responsibility of making profits for its stakeholders is not essential because the factor that undermines the business from making profit is the need to be able to stay within the countrys laws, this is because if it breaks the law the stakeholders and the company will be fined and punished (Alexie, 2006).

On the side of the customers relations to the company, the customers have a preference to deal with companies that have a strong ethical profile. This gives a condition that a company should be abiding with the ethical codes at all times and in particular to all adverse conditions. If for instance the company that is seen to be ethical is on the other hand seen to be betraying its codes, then the results will be that there will be a greater damage to the company that had never claimed these ethical standards in the first place. This is because the customers will be disappointed and due to their nature they do not easily forgive. Therefore as a result they will be willing to transfer their loyalty to a different competitor and thereby the business will fall.

From the past, business has been essentially a struggle in the market for which only the fittest will be able to survive. This shows that, the consideration and entertaining the interests of others will essentially mean that this will jeopardize the chances of survival of the organization in the industry. Therefore, the entertainment of these ethical issues will mean that the business competitiveness and the chances of survival will lower to some extent (Alexie, 2006). This goes by the myth that the business success and ethics are at the opposite ends of the scale. It states that a business will either be ethical and be unsuccessful or on the other hand be unethical and be successful.

The myth states that although the unethical behavior is not accepted on the organization, its effects are not so much seriously harmful to the society. This issue is perceived to be as a bad thing to the society but it may on a different perspective be not be a bad thing either. This is because, thought it affects the society many ways, it only affects a particular portion of the whole society but not everyone. Therefore, this shows that even if the firm does not use some ethical principles, it may only have few negative implications to the society and the firm as a whole.

In some areas of operation, the environment does not necessitate the norm of behaving ethically. Therefore, behaving ethically for the benefit of the society and less benefits for the firm may not be essential. According to the same issue, it is viewed that is the majority of a particular environment does not have the ethical values or the ethical values are not their norms, then there will not be a difference for the company to be able to make an effort to turn things around (Alexie, 2006). This goes with the saying that, a person should do whet others do in a particular environment even if it is unethical according to the moral behavior.

Different businesses do not have similar corporate structures. Therefore, it will not be beneficial for one company to use and provide the watertight ethical rules that are used by a different organization because it may not apply to the company. There are different general guidelines that are used to help managers for the assessment of the ethical implications of their decisions and behavior that they may apply in the structures (Alexie, 2006). These guidelines may be as follows they should use a framework that obeys the law, they should tell the truth, they should show respect for people, they should stock to the golden rule that states that you should do to other what you want to be done, they should practice participation for all employees, and above all, they should do no harm to any body.

It is not necessarily that a company should put in place the ethical standards for its employees therefore, a company should take the ethical guidance position to a much further step. This is aimed at maintaining the setting standards to be able to evaluate the behaviors of the business in goodwill. Measures should therefore, be put in place in order to prevent and control the unethical behavior in the organization. The legislation and the regulations may be imposed to be able to facilitate the control. These can be achieved internally by the use of the setup of the management structures and the policies that can minimize the ethical failures within the organization (Alexie, 2006).

The issue of survival for the fittest in the business world also has been discussed further. Some businesses engage themselves in the unethical practices for the sake of their survival. Some of these practices are common and well practiced. There is the dog eat dog myth, this myth states that due to the high competition in the business world there is a need for one business to be surviving on the expense of another one. This is because for a business that tries to accommodate the interests of another business will never be successful. That business will unsuccessfully be accommodating the interests of another business at its own expense. On the issue of ethnicity, those businesses that try to be so much ethical will end up weakening their positions due to the opening up of the gaps that may be used by other dogs to attack them.

The issue that, ethics have no place in the business has given the multinational companies a complex issue in their operations. This is because the decision making that is aimed at ethics is never profitable as compared to the choices that do not embrace the issue the ethical element. There has been an inherent belief that, the nature of prominent and successful businesses sometimes does not follow the lack of ethics in their visions for better profit making (Alexie, 2006). For one to be able to come up with this decision there has to be some recognition for the ethical making processes of many companies and also the reflection on the fiscal, organizational, and operational implications on the perceived outcomes if the opposite choices are to be made. On the same issue consideration should be made on the morality and the progression of the moral behaviors on the business operations and their implications for the companies to expand to the multinational levels.

It is however, perceived that, ethical choices are not always the most sound business decisions that a company can rely on. For example a pharmaceutical may discover that they could develop a drug that can end the sickness of blindness in many people but there will not be any financial benefit derived from it. In addition to that the costs that were to be incurred were to be very high (Alexie, 2006). The pharmaceutical may choose either to recognize a moral suffering and produce the drug however costly, or on the other hand neglect the moral obligation and stop producing the drug but produce others that are have a benefit to the firm.

According to these two cases the first pharmaceutical did not practice its obligation of benefiting their stakeholders and also to represent them in their own interests in the best way so far. This might cause a conflict between the interests of those outside the corporate structure and the shareholders, employees and the administrators of the company. This brings us to be able to understand the underlying reason as to why the ethical choices are not applied freely in the business structure of many organizations.

On a different perspective, if the pharmaceutical was in favor of the drug production he would also be committing an unethical decision on the side of the shareholders and the standard of behavior that exists between them as per their contractual agreement. Under this argument, since the corporations are institutions that are economical, to apply the moral standards those are at the expense of their revenues and that can prove a risk of the underscores will be very hard on these organizations.

A challenge enters to the multinational companies that often have their branches in many parts of the globe. They are prone to entering different communities that have varied standards for business operations and in their moral standards that eventually determine their ethical behaviors in general (Alexie, 2006). As these companies pursue their expansion as a means of reducing their costs in the long run with less legal requirements, the question of the ethical moral standards is the most problem to their management policies that they can choose.

In most cases most multinational companies enter into the expansion into other companies with the major aim of taking the advantage of lower taxes, fewer legal and social constraints. Therefore, they enter into these markets with a small concern for the moral and ethical practices for the operations for their business and organizations. This means that for them to survive in these businesses they must be able to adapt to these environmental moral practices as their ethical standards (Alexie, 2006).

The greatest concern for the business ethics is that, the ethics of the business may not be determined by community in which the multinational business may be expanding to rather these organizations may even not look at the places they expanding to but their ethical choices may reflect on the on what is the best economic interest of the company is. Therefore, business ethics must not look or focus on the issues that affect the third party but also it must take into consideration on the actions that negates the passive process of allowing harm to happen. For example a company may not pursue the ethical choice or take an action because if they may not have taken the action, they will be allowing harm to occur.
In order to determine whether the ethical behavior of the business has got any impacts on the business financial status, we need to be able to determine the effects of the ethical and unethical behavior that occur both internally and externally. The internal workers can be the also be affected by these ethical issues and in the long run can act in various ways (Alexie, 2006). This means that the production efficiency, the distribution and the exchange functions are to be influenced by the firms ethical issues that underlie the organization.

To start with, in the internal organization, the law and the governmental regulations usually determine the ethical behavior, the stakeholders, that are external to the firm can also affect the financial status of the business due to their influence on the firms decision making process. The suppliers, customers and the stockholders are likely to react directly through the buying and the selling activities, and this has an impact in that influences the press, local communities and the society. Therefore, to be able to answer the relationship between the ethical and financial position of the organization will require the organization to analyze the measurements of the effects of the ethical or unethical activities if all groups that affect the organization and that each and every organization should take a practice that best fit its corporate and operational structure (Alexie, 2006).

To be ethic in business or not means that the organizational corporate structure is able to take consideration and be aware of the possible consequences of the actions of the firm before they are to take place, making the reasoned moral judgments about the consequences, and choosing the actions that are most important to the organizational structure and that can cause less harm to both parties of the organizational structure. To be able to do this analysis the corporate structure should be able to ask itself questions such as what is right from wrong, what is or what ought to be, how to be able to get out from what is ought to be, and what is our motivation.

In conclusion to this issue the determination of immoral judgments or ethical and unethical issues in knowingly deciding the right decision for your organization that affects it in the long run (Alexie, 2006). Some ethical issues can be seen as being unethical to some other organizations and even to the regulatory authorities. On the other hand some other unethical issues may be considered to be ethical to the surrounding community or environment. Therefore, it is basically important for the organization to try to meet the interests of both parties of the organization. Profit maximization being the major concern of any corporate structure should be analyzed keenly for the determination of the ethical policies that govern the day to day activities of the firm.

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