Business Ethics Developments - Essay Example

Business ethics Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: Introduction Business ethics is one of the strategies which have been applied by many organizations of that they can improve their competitiveness. Business ethics is the practice of applying the moral principles when conducting the business operations. Business ethics helps to shape up the behavior of the managers and the employees. It enables the employees to identify what is right and wrong and avoid behaviors which can otherwise affect the operations of the company (Alford 2001). Instead, business ethics helps the employees to act on the best interest of the organization by avoiding vices which can affect the operations of the company. Therefore business ethics helps to improve customer satisfaction and also improve the reputation of the organization which can attract and retain many customers. This essay therefore will discuss that moral development should be applied when deciding to inflate the expense account and not the cultural values of the organization. When faced with a situation of making a decision as to whether to inflate the expense account can be based on moral development or on the cultural values of the organization in which an individual works. To start with, moral development should guide me when making the decision (Alford 2001). Moral development is the application of moral principles which can help to improve the performance of an organization. It guides the employees when conducting their tasks. The moral development helps to uphold the business ethics by following the principles of business ethics. Application of moral development when making the decision helps to attract the investors to the organization. This is because applying the moral development helps to improve the reputation of the organization and this enables the organization to attract investors to the organization. This decision is made on the best interest of the organization but not the individual gain (Soule 2003). The moral development helps to attract investors because they will know that their money will be utilized effectively and will increase their returns and they will feel safe with their money. In addition, applying the moral development to make the decision to inflate the expense account will help to satisfy the employees. This is because my decision will be based on the moral principles but not on my own interest. This decision will help to benefit the employees and the whole organization at large. In this effect, the employees will be motivated to implement the budget because they understand the benefits that will be reaped from inflating the expense account. There will be less resistance to change since the decision will benefit all the stakeholders of the organization unlike following the cultural values of the organization which might be too rigid to accept such changes (Barth 2003). Sometimes the cultural values may not be flexible enough to accommodate the changes that might arise in the organization therefore moral principle should be applied to make the decisions. Application of the moral development on the other hand helps to improve customer satisfaction. This is because moral development will help to inflate the expense account so that the quality of products and services which are manufactured by the organization will be of good quality (Boatright 2000). This implies that the beneficiaries of the inflated expense account include all the stakeholders of the organization which include the customers. The customers will therefore benefit from the decision and the organization itself will also benefit the organization since it will increase the sales thus increasing the returns to the organization (Richter 2001). In addition, the customers will be able to buy the products of the company since they know that the organization applies business ethics in the products of the products and this implies that the organization behave in a responsible way of doing things. This helps to improve competitive advantage of the organization in the competitive market. Applying the moral development in making the decision helps to improve risk management that faces the organization. The organization will be able to pay its debts thus avoiding legal issues with the customers. For instance, the organization will be able to pay the suppliers as agreed thus maintaining good relationship with the stakeholders (Callahan 2004). This helps to avoider will the risk of being faced with legal issues which could ruin the good reputation of the organization. This enables the organization to avoid fines of paying late and also enables the organization to protect itself from corrupt operations of not paying the employees or the suppliers. Decision made based on moral development helps to improve the reputation of the organization. Good image is one of the hardest things to build but takes the shortest time to ruin. Inflating the expense account enables the organization to meet its increased obligations and satisfying the promises made to the stakeholders (Kaptein & Johan 2002). The importance of doing this is to ensure that the organization has a good reputation because the stakeholders will perceive the organization in a positive way since the organization applies the moral principles when performing the tasks. Good reputation helps to improve competitive advantage of the organization because the customers will perceive the organization as the one that upholds the ethical standards which in turn helps to ensure quality standards of their products. Moral development also helps to improve the relationship between the organization and the stakeholders. Inflating the expense account on the other hand helps to improve the public relations between the organization and the employees (Johnson 2003). For instance, the employees will be compensated well in accordance to the market demands and this will help to improve the relationship between the management and the employees of the organization. This is because the employees could also want a compensation increase as the economic conditions increase. Unlike when making the decisions based on the cultural values of the organization which might be too rigid for the any changes in the organization, moral development helps to make decision for the best interest of the organization thus retain a good relationship between the organization and the stakeholders. The decision should also be based on the moral development because it will encourage the employees to make decisions which can help to improve the performance of the organization and not on their selfish interests. The employees will be able to follow the moral ethics when performing the duties on behalf of the organization (Zinbarg 2001). Therefore, moral development helps to develop the behavior of the employees which will benefit the organization and the stakeholders as well. For instance, the employees will be able to apply their skills to ensure effective utilization of resources. This will lead to minimization of the input while maximizing the output. In this regard therefore, moral development will help to improve the productivity of the organization because all the stakeholders pare justified with what they are doing especially the employees. On the other hand, there are those who argue that organizational cultural practices should be applied when making decisions about whether to inflate the expense account. They argue that the organizational culture should be followed to the latter (Klein 2002). This will help to improve the values of the organization. However, this has point has been criticized because the organizational values and culture might be too rigid to accommodate any changes which will benefit the organization. The organizational structure might not be flexible and this implies that the expense account will not be tempered with and the final result will be that the organization might not be able to meet its increasing demands. The organizational culture and values also help to promote the ways employees relate to the organization. It helps to maintain the organizational culture of the organization since the employees will only do what is stated in the organization and not what is not within the organizational values (De George 2003). The criticism of this point is that the employees will act within the mandated authority but cannot act on the best interest of the organization. This will hinder the application of the business ethics by the employees when performing their tasks. In this regard therefore, the decision to encourage inflation of the expense account could be affected by the moral development and not the organizational cultural values which might not reflect the current demands of the organization. Conclusion Moral development helps to improve the quality of decision being made. The decision to inflate the expense account is affected by the moral development since it helps to make a decision which will be accepted by the stakeholders. It will also help to attract the investors into the organization as well as improving the relationship between the organization and the stakeholders. Moral development principles also help to improve the reputation of the organization. Those who argue that cultural values of the organization can affect the decision argue that cultural values help to uphold and to maintain the organizational cultural. In this effect, moral development can affect the decision of inflating the expense account. References Alford, C 2001, Whistleblowers: broken lives and organizational power. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Alford, H. J 2001, Managing as if faith mattered: Christian social principles in the modern organization, Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. 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Soule, E 2003, Morality & markets: the ethics of government regulation, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Zinbarg, E. D 2001, Faith, morals, and money: what the world's religions tell us about money in the marketplace, New York, Continuum. Read More