Personal Ethics Action Plan - Case Study Example

Personal Ethics Action Plan Table of Contents Section 3 Ethics 3 Leadership 3 Character 4 Service 4 Section 2 4 Fraud 4 Discrimination and Prejudicial Employment Practices 6 Managing the Ethical Issues 7 Section 3: Case Study 8 PISCO Decision Making Model 8 Section 4: Conclusion 12 References 13 Bibliography 14 Section 1 Ethics The term, ‘ethics’, basically refers to a standard related to right and/or wrong of a certain practice. It sets down the function of the human in terms of the specific virtues, rights, benefits to the society, compulsions and equality. The ethical standards tend to involve the principles that are related to the numerous rights such as right to privacy, right to liberty from injury and the rights that are related to life. The individual needs to involve ethics in his day to day operation to provide rational and ethical perspective to any prevailing situation. Leadership Leadership can be comprehended as the method of influencing a group by the individual to accomplish common goals. An individual leader needs to recognize the core values. He also needs to have the audacity to live them throughout the life in the service of common good. This is known as personal leadership. Character ‘Character’ in simpler terms can be comprehended as the numerous actions taken by the individual. The actions are thus taken for the purpose of carrying out the ethics, moral as well as values. It is to state that character may not be reflected in what is said by a person or in his intention to do something. It is reflected in what the individual does. Service Service can be explained as the action taken by a person for the purpose of helping someone. There is close relation between the service as well as leadership. A leader is supposed to delegate the task to his followers and is also accountable for performing many other services. However, he also needs to assure that his followers are completing the task in an ethical manner for achieving the common goal of the organization. Section 2 Fraud Fraud is an ethical issue that impacts the success of the organizations as well as the leaders. The ethical decision is made when a person tends to recognize that a certain context has ethical components. One needs to develop ethical-issue awareness for the purpose of understanding the business ethics. It is the conflicts that give rise to the ethical issues. The conflicts may arise among the individuals’ personal moral ideologies as well as values, the values along with the culture in which they work in the organization and the society in which they live. It is to state that the ethical issues are problems, opportunities or situations requiring the individual, organization and the group to select among numerous actions that need to be assessed as right or incorrect along with ethical and unethical. It can be stated that if an individual involving himself in any kind of misleading and deceiving practices for the purpose of advancing his interest over those of the organization, then it that case they are charged of fraud. Fraud can be understood as the deliberate communication deceiving, concealing and manipulating the fact related to the organization for the purpose of creating a false notion. It is treated as a crime and thus a person fetched with it can be penalized such as imprisonment, fines or it may at times lead to both depending upon the severity of the case. The most common form of frauds as reported by the coworkers are shoplifting or stealing of the office supplies. It has been noted that in the modern times accounting fraud is more pronounced, and thus it has been an ethical issue. However, frauds are not limited to accounting. In the recent times, fraud has also been related to the consumers as well as marketing issues. Accounting fraud is becoming one of the serious issues in the corporate houses. It is the financial report of the corporation that helps the investors as well as the other related parties to make informed judgment regarding their deals. If this report or document is full of irrelevant and inaccurate information then it is a kind of fraud for which the company is liable and thus this kind of activities may lead to lawsuits and criminal penalties. Marketing is another area where the fraud tends to arise. When the marketing communication tends to be unreliable and misleading to the customers then it destroys the trust of the customers. One of the serious ethical issues in communication is taking the plunge of lies in marketing. In addition, false advertisement is also a major issue in marketing communication. Consumers as well involve themselves in unethical practices against the businesses that include item switching along with other activities such as lying to attain discounts and others. Discrimination and Prejudicial Employment Practices The other most important ethical issue has been the discrimination and prejudicial employment practices that most of the companies are confronted with. It is to state that a person’s racial as well as sexual prejudices are derived from the individual ethics. Both the racial as well as sexual discrimination tends to create ethical issues in the workplace. It is evident that race, age discrimination and gender are the biggest sources of legal debate in the workplace. Discrimination and prejudicial employment practices become the serious ethical issues when the companies start discriminating against the specific group of employees in the organization in terms of race and other personal factors (Ferrell & Et. Al., 2005). Managing the Ethical Issues A leader needs to distinguish his roles and responsibilities in the organization for the purpose of dealing with the ethical issues. It is to state that it is quite difficult to understand and realize the ethical issues in the organization. If the ethical issues are not acknowledged in the right time then it may lead to danger in the organization. A leader in an organization needs to determine if the organization has adopted the policies related to the ethics or not (Velasquez & Et. Al., 2010). If it has not been incorporated then the sole responsibility of the leader is to initiate various policies related to ethics so that such kind of discrepancies do not take place in the organization repeatedly and thus the effectiveness as well as the efficiency can be enhanced within the organization. However, the approval of the higher authority is required. In addition to taking approval from the higher authority it is important to take the approval from most of the members of the organization. Open discussion on the issues faced by the individual can be encouraged so that the victim gets a chance to confront his grievances in the workplace. After having recognized that the individual or the group faces the ethical issues in the organization through open discussion and seeks for guidance from the top authority then the individual tends to enter in the decision making process. Being the leader of the organization he/she is supposed to provide his own yardsticks to ensure that he operates the organization in an ethical manner. Further, it would not be wrong to state that instead of blaming the person caught of doing the illegal or unethical work, the leader needs to focus his attention towards finding the best solutions so that the mistakes are not repeated again and again. Examples can be provided so that the accused can be motivated towards realizing his mistakes and thus assisting the organization to accomplish the group goals. Training can serve as the most important factor for the motivation of the accused in the organization. However, the point to note by the leader is that despite numerous efforts if there is no probability for improvements then the accused needs to be penalized to make him realize of what has went wrong and what can further be done to minimize such unethical behaviors and cases. Section 3: Case Study The case study has been related to business ethics and the main character of the case study has been Mr. Ben Garrison. The person has been called the main character since he has been the person who has been related to the problem of the case study. PISCO Decision Making Model In this context, PISCO model of decision making can be employed since it can be of great help to solve the issue of the case study and thus arrive at proper solution. PISCO is a general decision making model that can be used for the purpose of arriving at the proper solution. In PISCO, ‘P’ means problem, ‘I’ stands for input, ‘S’ stands for solution, ‘C’ stands for choice and ‘O’ stands for operation (Edward De Bono, 2011). Problem The main problem that has been noted from the case study is that Mr. Ben has not been compatible with the changes that have been decided with regard to main focus upon the ethics in the policies of the organization. It is to note that Mr. Ben can be considered as being quite unethical with his client Mr. Doug Whitton. As far as ethics is concerned, bank is supposed to bear the overall cost associated with the evaluation of the site. However, Mr. Ben states that Doug Whitton is supposed to bear the overall cost for the evaluation. Further, Mr. Ben has been planning to organize First National Federal’s annual fundraiser picnic where all the customers of the bank would be requested to donate the prizes for the years drawing. Once again the intentions of Mr. Ben seem to be irrational and unethical. In the case study, Shelby Grant seems to have been quite understanding and rational as far as ethics is concerned. She can be considered as a leader who follows ethical behavior in her leadership style (Center for Ethical Leadership, 2007). She is found to be opposing to what Mr. Ben has been proposing. Since Shelby Grant has been the loan officer, she was bestowed with the responsibility to handle the issue. However, she was perplexed and was unable to take the right decision. The main purpose of the case study is to arrive at the proper solution and to gain an understanding to the kind of ethical responsibility that Shelby Grant is supposed to have to take certain actions after having observed that Mr. Ben is being immoral and unethical to the client as well as the organization. It will also be tried to analyze the accurate time when the individual is supposed to become accountable for the action of another person. Inputs It is to state that ethics is observed as the codes of conduct at the workplace and it is the personal values that tend to make the personal ethics stronger by instilling positive behavior as well as positive attitude. The ethical person tends to be honest, responsible, diligent, respectful and trustworthy in nature. When the case study is taken into consideration, Shelby needs to play a vital role to solve the issue of unethical and immoral practices in the organization. It can be stated that Mr. Ben seems to be ethically incorrect and can be considered as fraud since he has been misleading Doug Whitton as well as the other customers of the organization. Therefore, after having noticed the unethical practices in the organization it becomes imperative that Shelby Grant takes adequate action to resolve the problem and thus maintain the reputation of the organization. Solution Shelby Grant can report to the higher authority regarding the practices of Mr. Ben, since she is accountable to the customers who trust her and acquire loan from the company. The HR manager can be of great help in this regards (Smedley, 2008). She needs to inform the management that the senior loan officer is not only acting unethically but also misleading the clients. Being the employee of the organization, Mr. Ben is socially responsible to serve the customers in the best way. The other alternative solution that Shelby Grant can consider is that she can directly talk to the client regarding the wrong intentions of Mr. Ben so that the client can be prevented from being treated unethically. Proper training and development programs on the ethics and its role to the organization can serve as one of the means to solve such dilemma. Shelby Grant can consult with the higher authority to conduct numerous sessions on Ethics in organization so that Mr. Ben is aware of the losses that unethical practices may bring to the organization as well as his personal life. Choice It can be stated that conveying the unethical intention of Mr. Ben to the higher authority will be the best solution to the problem so that the organization can prevent its customers from being cheated and misled and thus from switching to their competitors. Operation After having complaint regarding the unethical behavior of Mr. Ben with the higher authority, it becomes imperative on part of the management to either provide training to Mr. Ben on ethics in the workplace or impose certain other strict laws and policies to prevent such practices from reoccurring. When providing training, performance appraisal will be conducted on a regular basis in order to review the progress on the training program. If the management views that there is requirement of further training then certain more sessions on training will be held. Section 4: Conclusion The overall study has been quite beneficial since it helped to enhance the understanding on the topics like ethics, service, character and leadership. It has provided an opportunity to comprehend that ethics is not entirely related to morality. The phenomenon of ethics is quite complex including dimensions of personal as well as the professional life thus leading to higher performance by the business as well as the society. It has helped to comprehend to the fact that after having noticed that a person is acting unethically in the organization, it becomes imperative on his part to take certain action towards that person and thus lead the organization towards the success. References Center for Ethical Leadership, (2007). Ethical Leadership. Definition. Retrieved Online on June 14, 2011 from http://www.ethicalleadership.org/philosophies/ethical-leadership Edward De Bono, (2011). PISCO. Passage Detail. Retrieved Online on June 14, 2011 from http://www.edwarddebono.com/PassageDetail.php?passage_id=1166& Ferrell, O. & Et. Al., (2005). Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases (Sixth Edition). Dreamtech Press. Smedley, R. F., (2008). Ethical Issues in Human Resource Management. Introduction. Retrieved Online on June 14, 2011 from http://www.cgu.edu/PDFFiles/sbos/HRD327.pdf Velasquez, M. & Et. Al., (2010). What is Ethics? Santa Clara University. Retrieved Online on June 14, 2011 from http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/whatisethics.html Bibliography Northouse, G., (2007). Leadership Theories and Practices. Sage Publications, Inc. Read More