Business Ethics - D7 Displays - Case Study Example

Running Head: Case Study- D7 Displays Case Study: D7 Displays Name of Student Course Title: Business ethics Name of Professor September 16, 2015 Introduction Business ethics are indispensable for the responsible conduct of business. They define the commitment an organization holds for positive principles and values that guide business conduct and decisions. Usually, business ethics dictate that decisions adhere with certain criteria and standards expressed in internal policy and procedures; a set of core values determined by owners and managers that include fairness, respect, integrity and honesty; and, trade principles including safety, product quality, efficiency, health and customer satisfaction. Issues surrounding business ethics cover such dimensions as honesty to stakeholders and a firm’s responsibility to contribute to the well-being of a community1. In light of these, Tom and Frank have demonstrated its utter disregard for business practices in behavior. These issues will need to be highlighted because they will not only put the company's reputation on the line but may also result to business losses in the near future. Situation The marketing director at D7 displays, Frank Davis has written an e- mail to Thomas Green relating to business meeting with a client where he blamed him for unpreparedness. Tom takes up the challenge and thinks of ways of improving the business including new offerings aside self service kiosk business. The boss then lectures him on how to make sales. During at this lecture from the boss Tom decides to float the idea of a new marketing strategy, but he is interfered with by the boss’ demand for success2. The boss advices him that succeeding in the project should be the only priority he should have. The boss called a meeting of 12 senior sells and marketing members to discuss the progress and the way forward for the business. Tom arrives the meeting late which is wrong protocol wise. The meeting begins and in the middle of the meeting the manager advices Tom that they should achieve 15% growth. The 15% growth is expected to come from the hotel, airline and car rental markets. Tom interrupts the boss by claiming that it will be difficult to achieve 15% growth due to the fact that the current offering represents a mature and saturated market3. He proposes new products of web-based check- in which offers the same services at a cheaper rate. The boss interjects and advises Tom to concentrate on current offering and the meeting is concluded. After the meeting, Frank Davis, the boss, calls Tom to his office and gives him demands including a copy of the memo to McDonald which contains various allegations about shortcomings and proposed corrective measures. Some of the allegations include poor judgment questionable behavior and skimming. He then demands that Tom should always contact him before meeting any customer as well as updating daily morning and evening all sales activities. Task Tom is preparing to respond to Frank’ demands some of them are unreasonable. Demands like updating all his schedules on daily basis, stopping from making calls with the intention of meeting clients and changing attitude looked unreasonable to Tom. The first Task is ensuring that ethical and decision making takes place at all levels of the organization is the provision of ethical leadership. Individuals have offered different definitions of ethical leaders4. The most important thing to consider is that certain features distinguish ethical leaders from unethical leaders. These features are mainly evident in the leaders’ behaviors. Ethical leaders are expected to be role models or to lead their subordinates by example. This is what the Frank should do. Ethical leaders should ensure that they come up with decisions that benefit the whole organization. Most leaders come up with decisions that are mainly geared towards satisfying their needs, thereby compromising the well being of an organization. Ethical leaders have the role of ensuring that decision makers are aware of the uncertainty and difficulty in solving ethical issues. This is important because it ensures that employees are confident in their leaders5. Ethical leaders are expected to live according to the society’s expectations. These expectations include conforming to the ethical standards of the society. Most ethical standards provided by the society are codified, an indication that organizations and their leaders must abide by the societal laws. There is no legal imposition of this expectation. Instead, it is dictated by the society’s beliefs, values and morals. The public in most cases expects all organizations to be trustworthy and ethical. Trustworthy and ethical organizations are able to gain the society’s confidence and support6. An ethical leader ensures that his or her subordinates behave in an ethical manner. He or she does this by requesting his or her subordinates to fully explain the steps they take in coming up with certain decisions or conclusions. This is important because it helps employees understand the importance of accountability in the activities in which they engage. Secondly, it enables employees to understand the necessity of communicating about their decisions7. An ethical leader should be able to create a safe space for his or her employees so that they are able to freely talk about ethical challenges. Frank should ensure that everyone is able to access ethical guidance. Ethics should be considered a legitimate topic during planning sessions, performance reviews and staff meetings. Another important point to be considered by an ethical leader is the relationship between methods used in achieving results and the importance of achieving the same results. Action The response by Tom should be polite even though Frank is trying to micro-manage him. He should understand that Frank is primarily responsible for creating and communicating the company’s vision. Tom can only recommend a new product which can be accepted or rejected. He can also take part in designing and implementing continuous improvement process of existing product, improving coordination and offering selected services to market. These limiting duties would allow the Tom to drastically increase his effectiveness and efficiency. The issue of limiting the roles and responsibilities of the Tom is quite intricate and puzzling. In this regard it is quite interesting to note that the objectives of the Frank are irrational which can lead to failure of company goals. However, there are numerous intricacies involved in this transformation. The issues could potentially derail the performance of workers and this is the primary reason why most of the managers are quite reluctant to apply this high-risk to high-reward strategy. These issues can be classified as dependent and independent8. The independent issues in this transformation include the following; first and foremost the new roles and boundaries of both the Frank and Tom are changed. In appearance this may seem like a simple enough task; however, drafting the details to the infinitesimal of details is the prerequisite for success of the expansion. In this regard the need for micromanagement of employees and creating an extremely exhaustive draft is the only possible way to ensure that the new expansion plan becomes successful. Both of the parties in the conflict; Tom and Frank, have adopted a conflicting stand point in the conflict. In simpler words each is demanding something opposite to its counterparty. Under such a situation all other colleagues will become divided. At one point a segment of colleagues will take sides with the Tom; the Frank should maintain a strong command over Tom to ensure success. The eventual outcome of this conflict has created a standstill amongst all concerned parties. In simpler words the Tom want to implement the ideas as soon as possible which is not among the company offering. Personal Attitude towards Conflict The personality of Tom and Frank will their personal attitude towards conflict. In essence, a person’s personality is directly related to his/her choice of conflict management style. This means that one should have high concern for others and low concern for myself; thus, Tom should take a passive type of approach on resolving conflicts with his boss. In addition, he should have is low on extraversion, high on agreeableness, low on openness, and high on neuroticism. He should adopt style of conflict management that is good at workplaces because of currently there is agreeable reasons such as certainty of failure in most confrontations because of meekness and kindliness, among other reasons9. In effect, he should make a decision of developing an integrating style of conflict management because it regards a high concern for self, as well as, others, as the figure below demonstrates. Furthermore, it comprises of constructive types of conflict management styles. The integrating style is high on extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness, which are relevant for productive relationships at work. The dominating style is somehow selfish and tends to get into confrontations more frequently than any other conflict management style. The compromising style is moderate on most admirable characteristics of a good personality, but not necessarily good for workplace10 Team learning- Many organizations are nowadays encouraging team spirit among employees. Team learning refers to the configuration or working as a group. Training along with team learning can edify workers on new modes of communication and handling change. Successful team-based firms promote and also reward group learning. Good team learning is characterized by harmonization of inquiry and support11. Each member should be given an opportunity to air his or her views and to also ask questions on any unclear concept. Support of views forms a crucial part of team learning. It makes each member of the team to feel appreciated as well as acknowledge his or her contribution to the organization12. Team learning in the case study is seen when Tom approaches Frank concerning web-based check-in services issue. Earlier on, Frank emails the issues to Tom and suggests that he requires changing. Harmonization of inquiry and support is seen where both Frank and Tom pose different questions to each other in their efforts to understand and look for a solution to low revenue problem. Once one of them asks a question or puts across a certain idea, the other provides his opinion on the same, as in somehow gives backup to the suggested idea. For instance, Frank comes up with unrealistic demands and Tom responds by saying that, it appears there is need a new product offering. Tom’s point supports George’s idea just as is expected of team learning. Dialogue is another vital characteristic of team learning. Team learning eggs on the team members to consider dialogue as facilitating the open flow of implications. Dialogue presents the participants with a chance to ask for clarification on any statement that is not well understood thus leading to enhanced understanding as well as solving of issues. More so, the use of dialogue confronts the suppositions of conventional communication in enterprises which are typified by inconveniences and lack of freedom of expression13. From the case study, the concept of dialogue as a type of communication is evident in several instances. The first dialogue is between Frank and Tom. The dialogue starts with personal opinions on the matter. Then it goes deeper to entail what the two would require for them to competently provide a good solution to the issue like improvement of revenue. Goal Accomplishment- Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid, also known as the Leadership Grid, explains how leaders are able to achieve organizational goals, by means of two constructs: concern for production and concern for people. Concern for production pertains to how leaders are concerned about accomplishing organizational goals. This encompasses a wide array of activities, such as policy decisions, development of new products, implementation and design of processes, workload, sales volume, among other things. Concern for production is not limited to the production issues only but rather, involves whatever goals that the company wishes to attain14. Meanwhile, concern for people pertains to how an organization takes care of its human resources. This includes cultivating the commitment and trust of employees, providing healthy working conditions, providing a good compensation structure as well as enhancing social relations15. In the Leadership Grid, D7 Displays is concern is manifested is through commitment to sustainability and places equal importance on “economic, ecological and social concerns” in the conceptualization of its business strategies. Among the priorities of D7 Displays, apart from the satisfaction of customers, are the safeguarding and creating of jobs and commitment to the environment. These are equally important as problem-solving expertise and open communication. Concern for people is another top priority for D7 Displays. Team Leadership- Hill explains that leadership is in the driver’s seat of team effectiveness16 . The tea leadership model is grounded on the belief that the leader’s job is to monitor the team and implement whatever action is necessary to ascertain the effectiveness of the team. This framework assesses the response that leadership has in terms of behavioral flexibility as well as the broad range of skills or actions that are needed to meet the difference needs of teams. Under this perspective, leadership is seen as team-based problem solving in which the leader endeavors to accomplish collective tea goals through internal and external analysis of issues and then selecting and implementing the suitable behaviors that will ascertain effectiveness of the team. Indeed, D7 Displays is structure around teams. Result It is clear that Frank is not being considerate to Tom but he should fix a meeting as well as tone down his arguments. Let him try to achieve the results as recommended. The response should be CC to MacDonald. When writing the memo he should not raise his temper or absolutely reject the view of the Frank as it may lead to failure of the communication. His current problem is continual to show strongly express his point of view which is contempt. By holding regular briefings with Frank , Tom will win confidence of his boss. As things stands now, the Tom and Frank believe that any resolution will create a win-lose situation. However, the reality is quite different from this i.e. all parties are seeking a single goal. It is quite distressing to note that the concerned parties have lost sight of this and as such these parties are hindering the implementation of the company goals. Bibliography Aronson, E. (2001). Integrating Leadership Styles and Ethical Perspectives. 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