Ethical and Legal Issues in Different Working Environments - Essay Example

? Legal/Ethical Issues relating to past, present or future work Legal and Ethical Issues in Businesses Introduction There are many legal or ethical issues that arise in the business environment. A comprehensive understanding of different types of legal issues helps an organization to maintain core business norms and values. In this essay, we will discuss core ethical issues in relation to customer administrator, accounting, sales, and marketing departments. An ethical approach to customer administration requires one to understand clients’ needs while still fulfilling the goals and objectives of the company. In sales and marketing, one should ensure that the advertisement is appropriate and meet its expectations in a given span of time. People who work in these departments should practice ethics that are closely tied to their job positions. Still, a business should be bound to its legal or ethical issues to ensure that employees are working in safe conditions. It is crucial for a business to adhere to ethical standards, when accounting and providing reports to the company and stakeholders. All information should be provided accurately, comprehensively, and in a timely manner. Thus far, this essay presents a set of ethical and legal issues in different working environments. Customer representatives Job position In this section, this essay discusses a business scenario where customer representatives serve as liaison between customers and sales representatives, providing customer service via email, fax and telephone. In most cases, a customer service representative interacts with customers and provides them with the company’s information (Mescher, 2008). There are complaints that a customer service representative must solve in accordance with the company’s policies and guidelines. Customer service representatives should ensure that clients’ complaints are valid, and further work hard to satisfy clients at all means. The job of a customer representative may involve selling the company’s goods and services. Customer representatives may provide clients with the information about the company’s products and services. Other duties include clerical responsibilities such as answering phone calls and directing customers to the department concerned. Customer service representatives may also be tasked with duties if processing new customers’ accounts, valuating customer accounts, and filing paperwork and documents. Ethical concerns As customer representatives provides customer services via email, fax and telephone. In such a case, customer representatives may access the company’s information either accidentally or dishonestly and thereafter share the information with other parties. As a result, the company may undergo challenges from the external environment as it attempts to protect them from what is happening in the company. A study conducted by Daramola (2013) shows that, 40% of most employees receive confidential information through email. When customer representatives have access to the company’s details, they are more likely to leak out sensitive data or information. It is important to note that, most companies use e-mail to receive and send confidential information. With this, it is difficult for a company to protect its sensitive information from employees. The business community may be very naive and many may choose to disclose company’s information and data. As previously mentioned, customer representatives provides clients with company’s information. In some cases, ethical issues may arise when disclosing sensitive information about the company to clients and shareholders. For instance, some customer representatives may opt to ruin the company’s image and with this, provides incorrect information of the nature, progress, and goals of the company. Some may discourage shareholders to invest in the company because of the projected downfall. In other cases, customer representatives may protect the company’s image in the expense of attracting clients. Ethically, a customer representative should increase customers’ satisfaction and increase their awareness on the products and services offered. In this context, ethical issues may arise when a customer representative exaggerate the company’s growth and mislead shareholders to invest more than ever. Such information may offend shareholders and in future, they may fail to trust the company’s information. Ethically, customer service representatives are expected to treat all clients right despite of any difference that emerge in culture, education background, social status, or disability just to name a few. Ethical issues may arise when customer representatives mishandle clients because of where they are coming from or their social status. For example, some White customer representatives may discriminate black clients. This may raise ethical issues especially in relation to race. In some instances, some male customer representatives may discriminate female clients especially when they are asking about the product’s price. Some representatives may assume that women are less empowered and thus, less likely to purchase the product or service. Application of laws There are various laws that govern issues and concerns of confidentiality, privacy, and security. For instance, at the federal level, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) impose duties on all business to safeguard the company’s information regardless of its size and operation. Businesses are encouraged to embrace policy and security rules in their business operations. It is crucial for a company to develop and implement laws that promotes privacy and confidentiality in the firm. Laws on confidentiality oblige the need for a business to define the type of information it collects and employ security measures to protect it. The legal duty on privacy and confidentiality oblige the need to observe principles of securing the company’s information from other parties. In the UK, the law of confidentiality is well-documented in the Data Protection Act (1998), which regulates the information data that could cause the company to collapse. To protect company’s information, the British Act recommends companies to make appropriate arrangements for the security of company’s information. Companies should ensure that computers are in secure area and with secure logins. Those working as customer representatives have the right to protect company’s information regardless of whether it is good or bad. For example, a customer representative should never disclose the company’s clients, the key secrets that boost growth, or how the company operates both locally and internationally. The principles under Data Protection Act emphasize that, all personal data should be lawfully and fairly processed. Company’s information should be processed in accordance with protection rights. Employees should not disclose company’s information without its consent. Recommendations to Improve the Ethical Climate In essence, confidentiality is paramount in the business environment because it develops and builds trust between the management team and employees. Confidentiality allows a business to interact freely without the fear of being exposed to other parties. It is important for employees to understand the importance of maintaining confidentiality in the workplace. Employees should learn not to disclose confidential information about the company’s market research, list of clients and their contacts, cost i information, information about new products development, details of sales and marketing plans, information about tenders, and terms of business. A company should provide details about what is confidential backed up by reasons. As a result, employees would understand the importance of maintaining confidentiality in the workplace. Sales and Marketing Departments Sales Executives provide day-to-day account administrative support for sales and marketing departments. Their responsibility is to attract and maintain potential and frequent clients to the business. Sales and marketing executives act as an agent between a company and its potential, frequent, and existing markets. Other major responsibilities include confirming and editing new and revised artwork and documents. They also revamp and maintain filing system for sales and marketing Department. Sales Executives are also involved in selling goods and services from one location to another. Important activities for sales executives include relationship building, researching the market on related products, and presenting goods and services in a professional way (Kadzik, 2006). Ethical concerns Most ethical problems faced by sales executives relates to the sale force. For instance, ethical questions often emerge when advertising a good or a service. For instance, ethical issues may arise when the advertised good or service does not comply with the terms and conditions of the sale. The advertised commodity may attract an undesirable market and as a result impose bad attitudes on the matters affecting the community. For instance, a company may opt to advertise its product to the gay audience and as a result, affects the company’s image. In this case, it is crucial for sales executives to highlight the importance of their products to the society. If the product breaches laws, morals, and religious doctrines in the community, then such a commodity should be removed in the market. Examples of other unethical market exclusion include ethnic minority and average and middle size markets. Ethical issues may arise when the advertised product promotes discrimination or racism in the society. Ethical issues may arise when a company prevents its image to the public. In most cases, advertisers may fail to tell the truth against their goods and services. For examples, most companies may emphasize that tobacco promotes health while in the actual sense it does not. When a company fails to tell clients the truth about the commodity or service distributed in the market, then such a company may offend the community. Most people may distrust the company’s information and this may reduce the number of clients visiting the business daily or annually. Although sexual innuendo is a powerful tool for advertising, to some extent it may be regarded as sexual harassment. With this, ethical issues may occur when the company utilize so much information about sex in their advertisement and forget the main information about the product. Sexual harassment may be an issue especially when children are advertising sex products or likely to be seen in sexual activities. Such an advert may offend some people despite being of high demand and interest to other people. Application of laws According to Staff (2006), Sales executives must understand the sales and marketing laws that apply to the business. Overall, they should make sure that the business is complying with consumer protection and adding value to the business. Whether the company is selling its products to consumers or other businesses, it must comply with trading regulations. It is important to observe these regulations because they regulate how a company advertise and market its products or services (Jennings, 2005). For example, misleading marketing can be investigated by trading standards and the imprisonment ad fine may be given. Protection regulations help a business to protect consumers’ rights. The rules apply to any trading or selling that does not occur face to face for instance mail order or online services. In this case, companies should protect consumers’ rights and ensure that goods are distributed on time and in the right place. E-Commerce Regulations regulates email marketing. This rule emphasizes on the need to send emails that does not negatively affects the company. For instance, a business should not send mails that disclose the company’s information to the clients. In any buying transaction, businesses must provide easy and clear ways that promote marketing in all avenues. The company should provide adequate information about the product and provide benefits of using this product. If the business is trading internationally, sales executives may need to take into account local regulation in the export market covering all aspects of the business. It is crucial for a business to understand how distance selling works, legal issues in exporting and importing, and online marketing (Adda & Hinson, 2006). Recommendations to Improve the Ethical Climate Sales Executives should provide quality and best administrative support for sales and marketing departments. They should work hard to attract and maintain potential and frequent clients to the business. A business should identify its potential buyers and work hard to sustain them to augment company’s growth. For further evidences, sales executives should provide written documents that reveal how the business has been functioning for a given period of time. Goods and services should be distributed on time and in the right place. They should build a strong relationship with shareholders and consumers to boost the company’s growth. To fully succeed than other competitors, sales executives should research the market that attracts many clients both locally and internationally. Accounting Department Accounting tasks include entering and verifying customer orders in computer database. In some instances, accountants in large companies provide daily invoicing of products for over $10M in monthly sales. They also create and maintain account reports in accounting systems, and provide a daily backorder report to managers and sales representatives. Overall, most accountants analyze business trends, operations, revenues, costs, and financial commitments. In today’s society, accountants develop, modify, document, and implement accounting and recordkeeping systems using current technology. They survey areas that need improvement and develop and recommend solutions to the financial problems. Despite the benefits that emerge from this career such as salary package, most accountants undergo many problems in their attempt to maintain and observe ethical issues of the position. Ethical Issues An accountant must remain faithful and loyal to legal or ethical guidelines when reviewing and presenting the company’s financial records. Often, an accountant must be vigilant and loyal to reduce the chances of people manipulating financial records, which could lead to criminal and ethical violations. The burden for the company to succeed and accomplish the set financial goals and objectives may place an accountant under pressure and stress on his work especially when creating financial statements and balance sheets. Despite a company having a strong need to succeed financially, the ethical issue of accounting oblige the need to maintain true reports to the company’s financial records. With this, an accountant must report company’s assets, profits, and liabilities without giving in the pressure placed by the management. Ethical issues may arise when an accountant changes the company’s financial records and play with numbers to present a false picture of the company’s success. Although this may lead to short-term fulfilment and prosperity, it may alter financial records and deteriorate the company’s growth in future when the accounting commission discovers the accounting fraud (Pearce, 2013). Voracity or greed is a core problem in accounting field that may make accountants to steal money and put them in their bank accounts. When balancing financial records, the money stolen by an accountant may become a liability to the company and in turn, violates accounting records. Greed may cause corporate officers and executives to face criminal prosecution, causing them to be imprisoned or charged heavy fines. In most cases, an accountant may opt to leave or omit some assets in the balance sheet for selfish gain. Executive or corporate officers may also ask an accountant to omit some financial figures to present the business in a bad light to the investors and public. In so doing, accountants may face criminal prosecution (Eidsness & Spencer, 2011). Application of laws Accounting and auditing law provide guidelines that guide firms on the manner of keeping and presenting financial book of accounts. In the article 2 of accounting laws, it is clear that accountants should prepare books of accounts in compliance with the professional, legislation, and internal rules (Yan, Wang & Byrne, 2010). The article emphasizes that, accountants should provide accurate information about the company’s growth and the current trends on revenues and losses. An accountant should be a qualified person with adequate knowledge on how to keep books of accounts, present, and prepare financial statements of a company (IBR &. P. R., 2006). Accountants should provide accurate transactions in relation to assets, equity, liabilities, expenses, and income. There should be written evidences to reveal that business transactions occurred. A firm should use two basic methods to keep track of financial performance that include accrual and cash accounting. Accrual records should reflect the company’s income regardless of whether cash has been accumulated. In other words, the records should reflect billings in the company that works in progress even when not billed. On the other hand, cash accounting should reflect the company’s accounting records, which reveals how cash comes and goes out. Income statements should provide accurate facts on how a firm is doing financially in a period of time. It should also reveal the net income or profit accumulated in a given span of time. In any business, cash flow is a crucial determinant of the business performance. Therefore, a company should provide realistic data that acknowledge strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities (Kadzik, 2006). Recommendations to Improve the Ethical Climate First, the company’s accounting department should be regulated in such a way that, it identifies and report any unethical behavior. The management should work hard to promote the company’s growth and success without satisfying personal goals or achievement. In other words, the accounting team should fulfill the goals and objectives of the company without practicing unethical behaviors. Those involved in greed and corruption should be punished by the law. When the government punished those involved in greed and corruption, it would improve an ethical climate. Accounting laws and regulations should provide a shield to any detected ethical problem in the financial market. Secondly, every shareholder has the right to know how the business is operating. A company should provide accurate data and financial records to its shareholders. Instead of manipulating shareholders to invest in the company using inaccurate information on how the company operates financially, the accounting team may encourage shareholders to invest even when the company is making low profit. The management team and shareholders should ensure ask insightful questions that relates to the company’s growth and development. An accountant should provide them with proper credentials that reveal the actual growth of the company and its liabilities. The company should fire every employee involved in financial fraud regardless of his position. In so doing, this would eradicate corruption, greed and selfishness that occur in the accounting field. Companies should introduce strict measures that discourage the management team to be involved in any financial deception. The management should solve ethical issues that arise in employment. Overall, this essay has discussed the ethical issues in relation to customer administrator, accounting, sales, and marketing departments. An ethical approach to customer administration on maintaining privacy and confidentiality has been discussed. In sales and marketing, the advertisement should be appropriate and meet consumers’ expectations in a given span of time. Accountants should practice ethics that are closely tied to their job positions. Thus far, it is crucial for every business to adhere to ethical standards that promotes equality, justice, and growth. References Adda, E., & Hinson, R. (2006). EXPLORING THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR BUSINESS AND ETHICAL PRACTICES IN GHANA.Journal of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues, 9(1), 69-80. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/216236652?accountid=45049 Daramola, I. (2013). 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The current trend to outsource legal work abroad and the ethical issues related to such practices. The Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, 19(3), 731-739. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/227363332?accountid=45049 Mescher, B. R. (2008). The business of commercial legal advice and the ethical implications for lawyers and their clients.Journal of Business Ethics, 81(4), 913-926. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9557-3 Pearce, J. A. (2013). Using social identity theory to predict managers' emphases on ethical and legal values in judging business issues. Journal of Business Ethics, 112(3), 497-514. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1274-x Staff, I. (2006). Boise state university to host workshop focusing on legal, ethical issues facing business. The Idaho Business Review, , 1. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/219132240?accountid=45049 Yan, L., Wang, H., & Byrne, S. (2010). Analysis of ethical issues in china's advertising industry 2001-2010. Competition Forum, 8(1), 142-147. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/760999240?accountid=45049 Read More