Defining Business Ethics - Essay Example

In life people face situations in their own personal lives or at the workplace which challenge a person’s integrity and personal values. These situations create a gut feeling into a person’s conscious in which the individual has to choose between right and wrong. Such a situation is called an ethical dilemma. Ethics refers to well based standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness or specific virtues (Velazques, Andres, Shanks, Meyer, 1987). This paper describes an ethical dilemma the writer experienced in the workplace a few years ago and how he handled the situation and the role personal ethics played in his decision making process to solve the dilemma. During the last few years I have worked for a company dedicated to providing technical outsourcing solutions. I’ve experienced great professional progress with this company which can be evidence that the level of responsibility of my job affairs. I am currently managing portfolios of clients which provide over $25 million of revenues for the company. I had tremendous experiences in this job, but I also faced tough situations in which ethics played a key role in how I personally handled a circumstance. About four years ago I was on a special assignment oversea. The company sent me and three other additional consultants to Taiwan on an assignment. Our job basically entailed a full inspection of the system design of a manufacturing operation of a client. We were hired as independent contractors by the Taiwanese company and by an American company that was involved in a business negotiation with the Taiwanese company. Our final report was very important for the end-result of the business transaction between the two parties. When me and my colleagues started on the assignment we had no knowledge of any of these particulars and simply thought it was another typical assignment. I had performed several jobs for the Taiwanese company before. It was my account and we had been able to complete several large business transactions, including a $3 million dollar software sale with this company. I had negotiated with them before; they were always very serious and concentrated in the specifics of the business transaction. I considered them very professional businesspeople. When we started on this assignment something did not feel right from the start. The first two days some Taiwanese associates meet with us and took out to dinner. Our group was sent on a couple of recreational tours of the city during the day. I was having fun, but this job was a simple low paying contract and getting this much attention and from the clients was a bit awkward. During the first three days we did very little work and we had a two week deadline to meet. We had enough time to complete the job and did not consider the project was behind at all. Our company philosophy for these types of inspection contracts was to apply the highest standards in the industry and to follow specific US based guidelines. The US based guidelines in for our industry are one of the highest quality standards in the world. By my experience with the company and what I had heard from colleagues that had worked with the company for over 20 years this was the standard operating procedure of the company. I had created a work breakdown structure of the tasks to be performed and key metrics we had to evaluate to prepare our final report and recommendations. On our 5th day on duty I checked my corporate email and received a troubling message from one of my superiors. The message I received specified some new guidelines I was suppose to follow for this contract. The guidelines were very loose and proposed an inspection which cut our workload by nearly 80%. We would not really inspect any of the systems, but according to these simplistic guidelines the end result would be a full seal of approval on the operations of the client. I immediately inquired about these changes; I was told that everything was fine. We were simply implementing the Taiwanese code for our industry to the job. I was not convinced by his explanation. I immediately entered some professional databases online and downloaded the Taiwan code. The code was very strict, nearly up to par with the US code. My boss had lied to me and I immediately understood there was something extremely fishy about our stay in Taiwan. I confronted my boss about the issue and he did not like the fact I investigated the Taiwan code. I said I would not follow the instruction since they were devious and not up to the company standards. Three hours later I received a call from the Chief Executive Officer of our company. He spoke in a very relaxed manner to me, unlike my immediate supervisor. He said he loved the work I was doing with the company and there was a promotion which would give me a significant salary raise and offered a tremendous professional growth opportunity. He did not directly imply that it was related to my decision on the Taiwan job, but he told me it was very important that I followed my supervisor instruction because this is what the client requested. He said that there was a lot of money riding on the transaction which depended on our report. He explained to me that we were not doing anything illegal, it was a simple audit job and we like the Taiwan operations. The CEO said, “You know better than me that this client has a state of the art operation, they are very technological advance and are professional businesspeople”. To a certain degree he was right; the Taiwanese clients were tremendous professionals. I told him I would follow the instructions and do what was best for the company. I called my girlfriend immediately and spoke to her about what occurred in Taiwan. She said she had read an interesting book recently which spoke about situations similar to what I faced concerning ethics. The book was called Defining Moments, by Joseph Badarraco. On of the theories of Badarraco is that business people many times face ethical dilemmas in which they make business decisions in which there are no wrong choices, all alternatives are correct choices (Badarraco, 1997). If I would have chosen to continue working on the assignment according to the quality standards of the American industry and performed the audit based on these standards it would have been a correct choice. The job would have been performed according to the highest possible quality standards, nobody could refute I realized a good job. The choice I choose was the right decision as well since I was in a position in which I had to follow corporate directives that provided me professional growth opportunities at my place of work. People work hard to progress in life and I deserved the promotion I was offered. Ethics is a very powerful discipline which provides people with valuable insight on how to deal with tough decisions. In the workplace many professionals encounter business decisions that expose them to dilemmas between the person’s personal values and ethical standards vs. corporate ethical standards. Ethics plays a role in the business world, but many times companies have to make decisions which are aligned with best interest of its stockholders which are increasing revenues to create higher stockholders’ value. These situations are sometimes very tough, and humans can not let personal emotion influence their reactions to these decision. If a person feels that making such a decision will hurt him in the long run, he can either walk away or make a decision that will keep his conscious free of remorse. References Badarraco, J.L. (1997). Defining Moments. 4. Velasquez, M. , Andre, C. , Shanks, T. , Meyeer, M. (1987). What is Ethics? Santa Clara University. Retrieved July 21, 2007 from http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/whatisethics.html Read More