Business Ethics and the Law- Incorporating Business Ethics
Introduction
In the current competitive business world, organizations need to maintain a good reputation to gain a competitive advantage. The main strategy used to maintain a good reputation is maintaining business ethics and ensuring that all operations in the organization are completed ethically. Organizations that have focused on performing based on morals, ethical standards, and values have identified the significance of communicating ethical policies and procedures and ensuring that ethical practices are maintained in all departments of the organization (Lütge and Uhl, 15). Ethical practices need to be modeled and implemented in accordance with the organization’s culture, and the administration must ensure that it is committed to upholding ethical conduct. Organizations also need to establish a formal code of ethics that outlines regulations, policies, and stakeholder expectations. The code of ethics also needs to be clearly communicated in the organization in both informal and formal ways while ensuring that there is access to support and guidance when insecurities and dilemmas occur (Becker, 30). The organization also needs to offer a thorough training program to ensure that employees are prepared for the practices, policies, and expectations to increase ethical awareness among employees and define criteria for organizational ethical decision-making (Mika, 20). It is also important to assign a leading role for ethical adaptation in the organization to an ethics officer when designing ethical programs to offer guidance on ethical practices and decision-making. An ethics officer is also needed to encourage ownership and accountability towards the ethical program in the organization. The officer should also design enforcement and response techniques to encourage ethical conduct (Stanwick and Stanwick,13). It is also important to conduct investigations and create provisions when employees behave unethically and reevaluate and redesign the sections of the ethics code when the need arises. Get in touch with us at eminencepapers.com. We offer assignment help with high professionalism.
Leaders have a major role in promoting business ethics through leadership practices such as establishing the foundations for ethical and resourceful performance. This is considered to be one of the most important and powerful aspects of human operations in an organization (Perry, 23). Effective leadership needs to be aligned with ethical leadership practices so that leaders set a good example to their followers. This plays a significant role in encouraging employees to be ethical even without supervision (Leigh, 20). Leaders can also promote ethical practices in an organization by promoting the organization’s ethical goals, mission, vision, and objective (Perry, 25). The expectations and needs of employees need to be assessed to ensure that they are directed and motivated in an effort to materialize and reach a common vision and mission. In the financial sector, having slid business ethics is important because the sector has many ethical dilemmas that could not only affect the performance of an organization if not addressed appropriately but also result in serious consequences such as imprisonment. It is, therefore, important for organizations in this sector to incorporate business ethics in their operations and Conscious(Business) Ethics. This paper provides a plan that will be used to incorporate business ethics in general and Conscious (Business) Ethics in Mustard Company, a financial company that offers various financial services, including savings options, loans, and financial advice.
Plan for incorporating business ethics in general and Conscious (Business) Ethics
Ethical Operations Plan
Mustard Company needs to create and nurture a business culture that is founded on ethical principles and values. This will be achieved by focusing on leadership to create an ethical workplace. To begin with, leaders in the company will instill shared values such as respect, honesty, compassion, fairness, and responsibility. These values will be considered in decision-making and ensure that all employees are involved in making decisions. The leaders will also establish a shared and common language that all employees are comfortable with and understand. This language will be used in discussing challenging and sensitive issues that could create ethical dilemmas, such as increasing interest rates on loans to increase the company’s profit margin and determining whether the company should deny some customers loans due to company financial issues. The language will be integrated into the infrastructure of the organization so that employees are not afraid to use it. Leaders will also reward employees who abide by the company’s ethical policies to strengthen ethical conduct by motivating other employees to behave ethically. Mustard Company leaders will also set up an ethical committee in charge of ensuring that employee practices satisfy the common benefit of the organization and stakeholders without making employees feel stressed or intimidated by the available challenges and decision-making options.
Mustard Company needs to set limits and control to regulate the behavior of its employees to ensure that they complete the tasks assigned to them are completed ethically. The first thing that the company will consider is honest and ethical conduct. The company will ensure that its employees act in an ethical and honest way, including the ethical handling of apparent and actual conflicts of interest between professional and personal relationships. All employees will be required to be honest when carrying out their responsibilities and act in good faith, diligence, due care, and integrity, and have independent judgment when making decisions that create a conflict between the interests of the company and the interests of customers. All employees will be prohibited from indirectly or directly taking any action to manipulate, coerce, fraudulently influence, or mislead the company’s external and internal auditors, arguing that the company’s financial statements are misleading. The company will also consider fair, full, timely, understandable, and accurate disclosures. All Mustard Company employees will be required to produce or help in producing fair, full, understandable, timely, and accurate disclosures in documents and reports the company submits or files with regulatory agencies and other public communications of the company’s financial information. The company will also include limits and controls to comply with applicable rules, laws, and regulations.
Mustard Company will also specify roles and responsibilities in accordance with ethical responsibilities. Employees will be required to familiarize themselves with the employee ethics code of conduct and provide an annual certification for review and the required code of conduct. Employees will also be required to avoid and report apparent and actual conflicts of interest to the general manager. The general manager will be in charge of investigating the reported conflict of interest reviewing the relationship or transaction in the conflict of interest, and referring it to the company’s audit committee before it is forwarded to the board of directors to consider the most appropriate action to take. If the board determines that the reported relationship or transaction is a conflict of interest, it shall offer a written summary of the conflict of interest to the audit committee with supporting documents, and the audit committee will be in charge of reviewing the report and determining how the conflict should be resolved. All employees will also be required to promptly report any conduct that they consider to be in violation of the company’s code of conduct and fully cooperate in an external or internal investigation of violations. Employees will be allowed to anonymously report violations in case they feel threatened. Employees will additionally be required to consult any member of the ethical committee in case they are not sure about the appropriateness of an action or event so that they can get proper interpretation. Employees will also be required to report any matters that could compromise the company’s integrity, including deficiencies in the internal controls set in place to oversee disagreements or financial reporting with respect to any significant accounting matter.
Mustard Company will develop an ethical framework that will be used to guarantee that operations are run ethically. The ethical committee will be required to establish the ethical framework by following specific steps. The first step will be recognizing the ethical dilemmas in an ethical decision or dilemma in the company. The committee will consider common ethical dilemmas in the financial sector, such as insider trading, investment management, and stakeholder versus organization interests. This will enable employees to recognize the existence of ethical situations before making informed ethical decisions. Ethical forecasts will also help in having a complete view of decisions relating to ethics and avoiding ethical dilemmas. The second step is identifying the stakeholders involved in ethical decision-making in the organization and determining how the decision will affect the stakeholders. The demands of the company stakeholders, who are customers, employees, and the community, may conflict with each other, hence putting the company employees in a position of being required to choose the groups to satisfy. Conflicting interests of various stakeholders have to be sorted by determining the ones with significant stakes in case a conflict of interest arises. The fourth step is generating alternative choices and distinguishing between unethical and ethical responses to create a balance between the choices so that everyone involved knows about an issue’s ethical dimensions. The fourth step is choosing the plausible or best ethical response and implementing it. This will be done by comparing ethical choices with ideal ethical outcomes to come up with a decision that is consistent with the company’s culture, goals, and values. It is important to consider the fact that although ethical behavior may not yield profit for the company every time, unethical behavior usually generates significant losses, particularly in the long run. It is, therefore, noteworthy for Mustard Company to understand that irrespective of the nature of the unethical consequences and their timing, they may have major costs in the long run.
Ethical Decision-Making Plan
A decision-making process requires an organization’s employees to choose among different possible actions that would be considered right or wrong by internal and external stakeholders. Mustard Company will enlighten employees on different ethical issues that may arise in the company’s daily operations. The ethical committee will be in charge of ethical awareness programs where employees will be required to interpret scenarios that demonstrate their ability to determine whether a decision or situation has an ethical dimension. These exercises will help the organization establish training needs to equip employees with the knowledge and skills required to make ethical decisions. By engaging in ethical decision-making, the company will be in a better position to avoid costly problems because employees will be able to determine whether a situation has an ethical component. Recognizing ethical issues and their consequences will also enable employees to be cautious in making decisions based on the fact that regular decision-making may make employees overlook important ethical issues. Ethical awareness programs will be combined with ethical training programs to familiarize employees with organizational and societal ethical norms and values, possible ethical issues, and solutions. The training programs will also help employees have alternatives on how to address an ethical issue because the intensity of an ethical issue is affected by its apparent significance to the decision-maker. It is temporal and personal in character to accommodate needs, values, perceptions, beliefs, personal pressures, and characteristics of a situation prevailing at a specific time and place. Individuals are also subjected to the influence of their respective groups when they face an ethical challenge. These groups include the legal system, the profession, the community, and the workplace. The main ethical decision-making frameworks that will be implemented in Mustard Company are the moral compass, the PLUS ethical decision-making model, and the Foursquare protocol, as discussed below.
Moral Compass
This method focuses on the quality of the decision-making process and the ethical foundation of every step in the process. The framework includes various lenses. The first lens is purpose. The ethics committee will help employees examine whether the results of a decision are ethical in relation to the organization’s long-term and short-term goals, the efficiency of the selected action, and the justification of the strategy used to reach the desired goal. The second lens is a principle. The ethical committee will help employees determine whether the decisions they make are consistent with ethical standards and codes. The committee will also ensure that the decisions are in accordance with the ethical norms set by the organization. The third lens is people. The ethics committee will be in charge of ensuring that the decisions made respect the genuine claims of the people they affect by conducting a thorough alternative and risk assessment. This will help in ensuring that the company does not make decisions that harm the people. The third lens is power. The ethics committee will help employees determine whether they have the power to take a particular action based on the resources in the organization.
PLUS, Ethical Decision-making Framework
This framework includes policies and procedures, legal compliance with legal regulations, meeting personal standards of justice and fairness, and compliance with organizational culture and values. Mustard company’s ethical committee will monitor the decision-making process to ensure that decisions are aligned with the company’s policies and procedures, comply with legal regulations and organizational culture, and agree with personal employee standards of justice and fairness. These considerations will be used to determine the viability of a decision that should be implemented.
Foursquare Protocol
This framework includes a close description of the situation, measuring the level of similarity with past incidents, gathering the experiences in similar situations, and analyzing the decision-making situation. The ethical committee will be in charge of gathering and presenting all the facts relating to an ethical dilemma to ensure that the best decision is made. The committee will also review the pros and cons and similarities and differences between past and present situations to determine whether they can be used as a guide to determine the decision that should be made. The committee will also determine whether there is any self-interest in the considered action, analyze the situation from the receiving end perspective, and examine the moral aspect of the selected course of action to ensure that the decision made is appropriate, conscious, and informed.
Ethical Communication Plan
Communication is an important function in every communication because it lays a foundation of how operations are carried out based on the clarity of organizational goals and objectives and employee roles and responsibilities. Mustard Company’s communication plan will start by examining the purpose and significance of ethical communication in the company. According to Weston et al. (245), examining purpose includes initiating the necessary ways that can be considered to meet desired organizational objectives and goals. The company will have a formal communication plan outlining how the information will flow from top management to lower management and other staff. The communication plan will also include the mediums that will be used by superiors to communicate with subordinates and guide and instruct them. The main mediums that need to be considered are memos and emails because they leave a record that can be retrieved when the need arises. Employees will be informed about the purpose of ethical communication, which will be to prevent ethical issues arising from poor communication. Ensuring that employees are aware of the purpose of communication also has a significant contribution to the implementation of operational strategies effectively. Employees will also be required to ensure that they use facts when communicating to avoid providing misleading information.
The communication plan will also highlight the most important stakeholders in the organization to ensure that they are provided with the information they request at the required time. The company will also use dialogue and discourse to acquire an efficient understanding of how things should be done in the company in accordance with the ethical code and determine the best solution to an ethical dilemma. Employees will be given autonomy to express their perspectives and ideas either verbally or in writing so that they can receive support in the implementation of ethics in their job roles. The duties in the organization will be carried out in adherence to the procedures, norms, standards, and principles set by the company to effectively contribute to generating the desired outcome. Employees will be required to report their activities to a department supervisor by submitting daily work reports. These reports will be used to monitor employee behavior and ensure that they behave ethically. The reports will also be used to predict ethical issues and come up with possible effective solutions that can be considered. Mustard Company will also develop feedback mechanisms to facilitate the flow of information in the company. Supervisors will be required to maintain friendly communication, particularly based on their performance and the decisions employees make when completing the tasks assigned to them. Employees will also be required to communicate setbacks so that supervisors can support them in completing various tasks in the organization in an ethical and satisfactory manner. Regular discussion meetings will also be held between employees and top management officials in the company to monitor their ability to handle ethical dilemmas in the company.
Enabling Corporate(Business) Ethics
Mustard Company will incorporate Corporate (Business) Ethics by applying effective tax rates that are in line with community tax discipline. The current financial sector is characterized by budget complications arising from the unsystematic implementation of taxation and tax rates. Actual spending and public pensions are not clear to existing taxpayers. The company may also experience a challenge in implementing business ethics due to pro-cyclicality, where there is a fluctuation of economies that may force the company to confuse investing in projects that generate profit and achieve sustainability. Mustard Company will, therefore, use business cycles encompassing booms and slowdowns in the economy to budget. Mustard Company will also implement risk management to deal with risks that arise as a result of unethical conduct. Proper risk management and effective tax rates will be incorporated in ethical quality, which includes initiating quality in the entire organization by creating quality service delivery, quality customer service, and quality products. Leaders will have an ethical obligation to the community and organization by focusing on quality at all organizational levels, using benchmarking to denote failures and successes, using innovations to increase quality, and setting ways and standards to measure the output of every department. Leaders will also use common sense judgment to save the organization money and time while meeting the needs of all stakeholders.
Enabling Corporate(Business) Ethics will also include ethical succession planning, ethical collaboration, and ethical tenure. Ethical succession planning is used to ensure that leaders enable and allow other leaders to be identified in the organization so that successors have a chance to develop and exercise their leadership skills. After these leaders emerge, existing leaders will be required to mentor them for future leadership roles in the organization without fearing to lose their territory. Ethical leaders acknowledge the critical nature of developing leaders through a strong succession plan for the general long-term success of the organization. Ethical collaboration implies that employees and management collaborate to reduce risks at all levels of the organization, ensure best practices, find solutions for problems in the organization, and focus on the issues affecting the organization. Leaders will, therefore, be required to look for trustworthy, knowledgeable, ethical, and astute advisors outside and within the organization and keep the advisors in the outside circle. Ethical tenure represents a leader’s successful length of leadership operations based on their ethical conduct. Leaders who act ethically for a long time will be promoted to take higher leadership positions in the company. This will encourage other leaders to demonstrate ethical leadership.
Mustard Company will create a map for stakeholders to determine their power and interests. This will act as a guide in selecting the best alternative choice when the company faces an ethical dilemma. The company will also focus on harmonizing the interests of stakeholders. The interests of stakeholders will be summarized as making profits, transparency, participation, and control. In every organization, stakeholders need to remain engaged in the activities in the organization affecting their needs. They also require the organization to remain transparent by informing them what is being done to meet organizational goals and objectives. The organization also needs to make a profit to meet the financial needs of the stakeholders. The interests of the executives will be having the capacity to make decisions, career development, prestige, power, and good income. Executives invest their time and money in running the company, which is why the organization needs to ensure that they are allowed to develop their career when running the company, exercise power in running operations in the organization, earn a good income based on the profits generated by the company and gain prestige when the company performs well and earns a good reputation.
Mustard Company also needs to acknowledge the needs of customers and employees. The needs of employees are decent working conditions, fair wages, and the right to privacy, while the needs of customers are product safety and quality, truthful information, and fair prices. The company will also ensure that it competes fairly by honoring contracts and playing fairly when competing with other financial companies. The needs of the government will also be met by protecting the general welfare and rights of citizens and employees and complying with government regulations. It is also important for Mustard Company to maintain a good relationship with the community, which is why it will ensure that it maintains social and economic development and cooperates with cultural, social, and educational institutions. The company will also respect and improve the environment and maintain transparency in providing the information required by the public.
The foundation of Corporate(Business) Ethics is ensuring that business operations are run ethically. Employees represent the largest group of individuals who contribute to the performance of the organization. Mustard Company will, therefore, focus on creating workforce transparency, which will begin during the hiring process. The company will ensure that employees applying for various positions are informed about what the company expects of them and the roles and responsibilities they will be required to complete, including information on whether they will be required to work overtime. The company will also communicate how the work of an employee contributes to achieving the goals of the organization. The company will also adhere to regulations on work safety by eliminating safety hazards such as fire and putting the right measures in place to create preparedness for such hazards by training employees on how to respond to fire and providing fire extinguishers. The company will also create a disciplinary committee to address disciplinary issues relating to the harassment of employees.
The committee will also work with department supervisors and top management to identify unethical conduct among employees and come up with the most effective disciplinary action. The company will also create Corporate (Business) Ethics by exercising corporate social responsibility aimed at improving and developing society. Besides participating in programs to clean the community, the company will also offer employment to community members. Skilled employees will be acquired by collaborating with learning institutions around the company to offer internships to students and later integrate high-performing interns into the company’s full-time workforce. The company will also offer scholarships for students in the community to ensure that even poor children get access to education. Small businesses in the community will also be offered loans and grants to boost their growth and contribute to the community’s economic development.
Conclusion
Incorporating business ethics in the running of operations in an organization is one of the trends that have enabled organizations to maintain a competitive advantage by gaining a good reputation. Business ethics is particularly important in the financial sector because it involves handling people’s money and helping them invest it in the right way. The plan outlined in this paper aims to help Mustard Company incorporate business ethics in general and Conscious (Business) Ethics. The plan demonstrates that the main areas that the company needs to focus on to achieve this are leadership, decision-making, communication, and employee management. The plan also demonstrates that leaders have an active role in ensuring that operations in an organization are run ethically. It is, however, important to engage employees in decisions relating to the handling of ethical dilemmas and disciplinary action to be taken when an employee is found acting unethically. This will motivate employees to act ethically, hence contributing to the reduction of ethical issues that affect general organization performance. The plan also demonstrates that business ethics include meeting the needs of stakeholders because most of the needs of the stakeholders affect the decisions made in an organization. Mustard Company needs to regularly review the proposed plan based on the changes in organizational culture and structure and the frequency the occurrence of ethical issues in the organization. Amendments may be made to the ethical framework selected to maintain ethical conduct and how the company supports community development because it may not always have enough funds to offer grants and loans to small businesses in the community. The use of ethical training programs may also be reviewed based on the availability of resources to support the programs.
Works Cited
Becker, C. U. Business ethics: Methods and application. 2018.
Leigh, A. Ethical leadership: Creating and sustaining an ethical business culture. Kogan Page, 2013.
Lütge, C., and M. Uhl. “Foundations and tools of business ethics.” Business Ethics, 2021, p. 15, doi:10.1093/oso/9780198864776.003.0005.
Mika, A. The importance of codes of ethics: Examination of the need for business ethics and the efficient usage of codes of ethics for good corporate governance. diplom.de, 2012.
Perry, A. “Ethics, leadership, and ethical leadership.” Biblical Theology for Ethical Leadership, 2018, pp. 23-25, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-75043-9_2.
Stanwick, P., and S. D. Stanwick. Understanding business ethics. SAGE, 2013.
Weston, S. J., et al. “Working toward a purpose: Examining the cross‐sectional and longitudinal effects of work characteristics on sense of purpose.” Journal of Personality, vol. 89, no. 2, 2020, p. 245, doi:10.1111/jopy.12579.
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Question 
The CEO of an organization for which you currently work (or have worked in the past), paid or volunteer, makes the following request:
“I understand you are taking a business ethics course at CSUN taught by Professor Chumney who really encourages the practical application of the concepts you’ve learned in the course. I’m very interested in seeing that we make ‘Conscious (Business) Ethics’ a central component of everything we do here. Please utilize the knowledge you’ve gained in the aforementioned course to develop a plan for incorporating business ethics in general and C(B)E in particular, into our company’s ethical culture and business activity. I would like to see the practical application into our organization of material from each topic you covered in the syllabus involving ethics: Socratic/Platonic philosophy, competencies and perspectives, personal development, decision making and action, Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, interpersonal communication, exercising influence, conflict management, leadership and followership, and organization.”
Business Ethics and the Law- Incorporating Business Ethics
Respond to this request by preparing a research paper that deals with the steps to be taken in order to incorporate key aspects of business ethics into the culture and business activity of your organization.
Your paper should include a discussion of the various ethical issues facing your company and the morally imaginative solutions you seek to employ.
Establish the current practices of the organization and examples of ethical issues faced in the past. Then, offer suggestions for improvement.
Be practical, bold, innovative, and as thorough as you can.
Draw upon insights from assigned readings plus ideas gained from class lectures, discussion boards, and weekly paper assignments.
Use resources from your company, readings, etc., and document all sources you use.
This paper is due on the last day of class. It will be graded in accordance with the rubric you have been presented. Please be very sure that it is carefully proofread and that it does not contain any errors. Write it as if the CEO of your organization is going to read it.