Values and Conflict in Organisations - Assignment Example

Values and Conflict in Organisations Student’s Name Institution Affiliation 1.0 Key Elements of Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a consequence-based theory: it does not matter why an individual did something (intent), nor does it matter exactly what an individual did (action) only the end result (consequence) matters. Utilitarianism is mainly characterized by two elements: consequentialism and happiness (Gay, 2002). In consequentialism, the consequences of actions are fundamental to the moral judgment of those actions. The action in itself is not wrong or right, the thing that is morally relevant is the consequence of the action. As a teleological theory, utilitarianism emphasizes pleasure, happiness, or utility as the desirable goals for human action and choice. Utilitarian happiness is the utmost happiness that each individual supposedly looks for. Under utilitarianism, all things useful to happiness are good. Utility is found in all things that contribute to the happiness of each rational person. The criteria of good and evil is balanced between the happiness of a community and that of an individual each counting in an equal manner. Consequentialism is an element of utilitarianism, which states that an action has to be judged for its effects on the happiness on the biggest number of people (Paley, 2002). A person search for happiness normally stops when it curtails the happiness of another person or the happiness of the biggest number, of the community or society. Since personal freedom is taken into consideration with respect to freedom of other persons and of the community, an individual ends when it reduced the society well being and freedom of another person. 1.1 Strengths One of the strengths of utility theory is that it views morality in teleological terms; the object of people moral action is as important as an action’s moral status partly depends on the motivation for acting. Kant referred to this important moral principle as the categorical imperative, which tells individuals the way to act regardless of the goal they might desire or the end. According to him, moral reasons take precedence over all other reasons. For instance, an individual may think that they have a self interest in stealing company money, however if the individual morality is based on a categorical imperative, then his or her moral reason against corruption supersedes their self interest motive. Kant proposed that individual treat people (as well as individual self) as ends in themselves, on no account just as a means of their individual ends (Boatright, 2007). The second proposition was that for this maxim to be a universal law individuals had to act only on it. Kant took the two formulations to be unlike manners of articulating similar fundamental standard of reverence for individuals. Each of these formulation guides employees to act in the same manner. The second strength is that people are asked to treat others as ends in themselves. This means that employers should treat their employees as people with intrinsic value. Employees that have intrinsic value possess value independent of their importance for different purposes (Boatright, 2007). The management should treat employees like means to an end only in manners, which are ethically acceptable. Employees are used merely as a means of ends when they are forced to do another person will or when they mislead them into acting in accordance with their will. Deception and coercion are standard contraventions of the categorical imperative in the workplace (Hill, 2008). In deceiving or coercing the employees, the management disrupts their autonomy and violates their will. Categorical imperative forbids this. Respecting other individuals entails abstaining from infringing their autonomy (Wertheim, Love, & Wittlefield, 2006). The morally relevant issue is the consequence of the action. An action rightness or wrongness is viewed completely in terms of its consequences. Virtue is the moral strength of individuals’ will in fulfilling their duty (Velasquez, 2002). This account of virtue by Kant presumes that a moral duty account is already in existence. Thus, instead of treating good character traits as more fundamental than the notions of wrong and right conduct, Kant considers virtues explainable just in terms of a prior account of dutiful or moral behaviour and this is quite important in the workplace. Human beings have a duty of morality as it is possible for their interests and desires to run counter to their demands. The other strength is that it searches for the utmost good for the largest number and this enables most people to always benefit. Rawl viewed morality as a system of norms for a community of persons who are free and equal (Brandon & Robertson, 2007). According to Rawls contractualism, there is a community of equals which is structured by norms and whereby everyone has equal status and expresses respect for this status quo. The norms are normally dependent on the consent or agreement of the free and equal persons (DesJardins, 2008). This should be the case in a workplace and employees should be free and governed by norms they have agreed on. Utilitarianism also encourages consideration of alternatives. The weakness of Utilitarianism is that it depends on predicting an action results, however one can never know the consequences of all their actions. In addition, if results alone determine morality, wrong intentions can still lead to right results (Hartman, 2005). In an organization people need to retain their integrity even thought it leads to unwelcome consequences. Utilitarianism also ignores the significance of duty. Actions in an organization many be right or wrong for reasons other than the amount of evil and good it produces. It also ignores the small minority as it is based on majority of people being happy (DesJardins, 2008). 2.0 Ethical Issues in Organizational Situation Securency International and Australian Wheat Board evidenced some of the ethical issues experienced in organizations. Securency bribed foreign personnel in order to secure note-printing deals (Cassin, 2010). The company produced unique substrates and polymer substrate used in printing banknotes as well as other security documents. Securency made improper payments to government officials in Vietman in order to secure a contract (Cassin, 2010). The company hired a local company as its local agent as it hired the son of the governor. The company also paid almost AUD 47.5 million as well as other payments to an international system of politically allied agents generating revenue of AUD 361.4 million. The company fraudulent activities were also in United Kingdom, Malysia, Nepal, India, and Nigeria. In Nigeria, Securency paid 750 million Naira (about 4.6 million dollars) in bribes between 2006 and 2009. Most of this money was transferred into bank accounts of two United Kingdom businessmen and then into the accounts of the Nigerian officials. In Malaysia, the company paid an arms broker to transfer the bribes to the central bank officials in the country. Concerns had been raised about these allegations but some of the top executives remained silent for years. This led the RBA board to call for faster progress in implementation of policies regarding employing agents and assuring ethical conduct. In Securency, there were ethical lapses and challenging moral dilemmas, which led to the company bribing officials to get contracts. Kant’s philosophy and Rawls contractualism sheds light on this situation. Kant argued feasible circumstances under which people regard their individual moral goodness as important forfeiting just to acquire some desirable objective are limited (Paley, 2002). In this case, Securency officials forfeited their moral goodness; the value of desirable qualities like transparency was diminished because of the official self-interest of capturing more contracts. Secondly, Kant argued that having as well as upholding an individual moral goodness is the very condition under which all else is important holding or pursuing. In this case, intelligence and pleasure were the conditions, which led Securency officials to give up their essential moral convictions. The value of good of an individual or other cannot be that it secures various important ends, whether of their own or others as their value is totally conditional on possessing as well as maintaining a good will. In this case, the officials actions did not express a good will as the motives were happiness, self-interest and self-preservation. The officials were motivated by happiness alone and they did not do their duty as the conditions did conspire to align their duty with their individual happiness. If the officials supplanted these motivations with the duty motive, the morality of their action would have expressed their determination to act dutifully under the given circumstances (Hosmer, 2003). Only then would their action have had moral worth. The Australian Wheat Board (AWB) extortions and bribes dated from 1999 where officials were asked to pay an addition $US12 for every tonne of a 600,000 tonnes (totalling to $US 7.2 million) order for supply of food to Iraq. This bribe was paid as a “trucking fee” via Alia, a Jordanian business that did not have any trucks. The contract prices were secretly inflated and fraudulent invoices sent to the United Nations (Whitton, 2007). The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade never checked these contracts as required to ensure that there were no breach of sanctions. The AWB as well as the politicians denied the allegations. According to the 2005 UN report, AWB had paid about $ 290 million in trucking fees. Numerous people knew about the extortion and bribes including government officials. Kant argued that the criteria of good and evil is balanced between the happiness of a community and that of an individual each counting in an equal manner (Shaw & Barry, 2009). The happiness of the officials who offered bribes and extortions in this case surpassed that of the community. Corruption violated the utilitarian role of business to attain the society economic welfare. The officials involved did not weight the benefits and costs of extortion to all the people affected by this action. The action did not produce the utmost good for the largest majority and hence it was not morally justified. Extortion killed the moral fabric of the majority and also wreak havoc on the business reputation and ethics of AWB which resulted in loss of confidence by people and also lead to loss of business patronage. 3.0 Moral Responsibility With Respect To Organizations Organizations’ have a duty to set ideal standards of moral behaviour both internally within the organization and in external relationships. In line with developing an integrated governance model for an ideal corporate, the emphasis should be on corporate social responsiveness as well as ethical moral business practices. This enables better governance, also promotes a more transparent, and respected corporation. Organizations are highly structured collectives with formal mechanisms for making decisions, articulating the collective interests and goals and outlining the individuals’ position within the structure. Goal-oriented collectives usually come together around the action towards the achievements of a particular goal that the members jointly embrace and aspire to. Organizations, which monitor their employment practices as well as their impact of their production products and processes, show the same kind of respect and rationality that morally individuals do. The moral status of an organization hence flows from the role that the management play in effecting right as well as wrong deeds and causing good and bad outcomes. Organizations are the holders of the type and extent of moral responsibility fitting to the extent and nature of their contribution in harm as well as wrongdoing. Organizations can also demonstrate various virtues, which lead to considerable goods for the persons who are directly affected and for the entire society. Important organizational good qualities that organizations need to promote are responsiveness and integrity. Organizations have the moral responsibility of ensuring that their employees are morally responsible and they act responsibly towards the clients. They have a moral responsibility to the whole community, for instance, they have are responsible for ensuring that their activities do not disrupt the shareholders and other stakeholders. In addition, they also need to ensure that the employees engage in activities, which benefit every member in and out of the organization. This can be done through formulation of policies, which guide the employees so that they can be aware of ways, which promote moral responsibility. All this is promoted when organization have leaders who are morally responsible (Freestone & McGoldrick, 2008). Organizations usually act through their human constituents and hence even though companies have to answer for the misdeeds people being about the misdeeds like in the case of Securency and AWB. Any particular organization culpability involves personal moral fault for the company workers and managers who effected the misbehaviours. Eliminating their blameworthy actions usually lead to the disappearance of the corporate misbehaviour. For organizational moral responsibility to generate a practical impact, it has to first exist. For an organization to be considered morally responsible, it has to be a real entity at least, which is not reducible to the sum of its individuals as well as other elements (Haines, Street, & Haines, 2008). Socially irresponsible organization normally result from negligence- the bribery and extortion cases in Securency resulted from the inadvertent failure by the organizations to avoid a reasonably risk of harm to other people. Corporate responsibility enables organization to change business behaviour and to have control implications as well. For organizations to have moral responsibility, there are two importance and sufficient conditions they have to fulfil-causation and intentionality. The potential moral responsibility subject has to be capable of acting in order to be the source of events (Jing & Graham, 2008). Secondly, the subjects meant the action under consideration or that the event resulted directly from the subject intentional act. All companies, including Securency and AWB have corporate, have set decision-making procedures or organizational internal decision structures. They can act intentionally or cause events and they can bring about a synthesis and subordination of the acts or intentions of various employees into company decisions (Eunson, 2005). As a result a functioning decision making structure includes the acts of the employees so that when a company takes action pursuant to the structure, it is appropriate to regard it as having been done for company reasons, as having resulted from the company desire couple with their belief- corporate intentional. This shows that organizations are proper moral responsibility subjects, however they are also fully-fledged moral individuals and all the rights, privileges and duties are in the regular course (Soloman, 2003). An organization needs to exemplify a practice of moral decision making which evidenced by policies. There is need to boost employees ability to employ moral reasons while making decisions (Lemmergaard & Lauridsen, 2008). Second, a company requires the ability of the decision-making process to control the structure of rules and policies and control overt company acts. With proper internal structures, organization and individuals can be responsible to offer an account of their actions, which lays downs the moral reasons that prompted their actions. Both Securency and AWB moral compass was awry; the employees of the two companies failed to act in accordance and the main message from these organizations was that they were out of control, doing illegal things in other countries, covering it up and the organization management failing to take any desirable or indeed legally necessary steps to stop it. Dynamic, robust, and effective policies and compliance plans would have been important in managing and avoiding the reputation disasters, which the two companies suffered (Fisher & Lovell, 2006). 4.0 Key policies in Customer Service Policies are usually the larger patterns of an organizational action. Policies on moral responsibility in an organization can enhance the moral responsibility of individual employees for their personal conduct (Desjardins, 2008). The policies impose regulation on employees causing them to act in ways that are beneficial to all people. The key policies evident in customer service of organizations claimed to be morally and ethical responsible are pre-transaction, transaction and post-transaction policies. The pre-transaction policy contains non-routine and requires the management input so that the activities can have a significant impact on product sale. These customer service policies reflect the customer needs, define service standards, determine the individuals who report the performance measurements to whom and with what frequency, and would be operation. The policies also contain a written statement of service policy for the customers, which reduce the chances that customers will have unrealistic performance expectations. When it comes to transaction, elements such as courtesy, confidentiality, communication, and consistency play an important role in moral responsibility (Eunson, 2005). For example, when it comes to courtesy, the policy indicates that employees are educated in the service standard. This is exhibited in friendly customer service skills and professional, knowledgeable and courteous service while meeting the needs of the customers. The issue of confidentiality is also very important- and policies usually indicate that all the information held or gathered regarding the business or personal affairs of the customers will be held in strict confidence for the sole use of the company. This is exhibited by failure by organizations to release customer information to any third party who should not have access to the information. When it comes to communication, the policy normally indicate that the organization can reached through difference means. All correspondence is normally responded in a clear, timely, and concise manner. When it comes to consistency, an organization usually restates its commitment to uphold professional standards. This is evident by implementation and constantly reviewed customer review policies, which ensure application across all the customers. The issue of handling complaints is also well addressed in the customer care policies. Organizations usually seek just, fair and prompt solutions when possible to any appeals and complaints. All such issues are directed to responsible parties in the organization so that they can be addressed so that the organization does not lose customers. The issue of access to information is also addressed by various policies. Organizations usually avail information on the organization as well as its work. The information is normally regularly updated in the organization brochures and websites. 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