Leadership Ethics in Contemporary Organizations - Essay Example

Ethics and Leadership in Contemporary Organisations Your name: Institution name: Introduction Ethical principles provide a platform for new concept for organizations, businesses and work, which have been seen to broaden the individual and corporations priorities far beyond the aim of stakeholders profit and enrichment (Bowie, 2006). Ethical factors have been noted to influence institutions and public sectors in different organizations (Carasco and Singh, 2007), for which the traditional priorities of service quality management and cost management must now take account of these ethical factors that affect the corporate world. This essay will discuss various ethical theories- such as Kantian deontology; Utilitarianism; Rights; Rawls’ theory of justice; and The challenge of normative ethical relativism- and their relevance in developing conceptual and applied critical understanding of ethical leadership and its reponsiblities in contemporary organizations, domestically and internationally. Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a common theory that is applied in business context. Utilitarianism can be defined as a decision that concerns the organization or corporation conduct can be said to be proper if the decision that is made in the organization is seen to be good by greatest number of people (Mill, 2004). “Good” in this context can be defines as the benefits that is realized to those people that have been affected by the decision. One major school of thoughts that have been held by utilitarians is that every decision that is moral must be evaluated on the benefits in relation to the alternative action (Mill, 2004). For example, a drug manufacturing firm may run its business on the principle that the firm will only release approved drug with some side effects as long as the drug helps more patient to prevent a particular disease than the number of patients being trouble by side effect of that particular drug. If the released drug helps to prevent or treat diseases, but the side effect of the drug is limited, then the action of drug firm may be justified on the premise of treatment, or the drug firm act on utilitarian ground. Utilitarianism theory will also evaluate whether or not the alternative decision that has been made conforms to the rule that try to maximize the overall utility (Mill, 2004). Some people have criticized the act of utilitarianism on the premise that it gives wrong answers when people actions are being analyzed. For example, a mortgage firm is considering whether or not to foreclose on mortgage on unemployed widow who has children. When this example is considered in isolation, it will be easier to show an act of utilitarian that foreclosure on the widow mortgage may lead to pain and suffering than not to foreclosure (Mill, 2004). However, supposed there is an existing mortgage regulation that states that: “no foreclosure whenever the deed to foreclosure would bring suffering on the affected people” (Mill, 2004). And if such a rule were to be implemented, then financial institutions would be reluctant to give mortgage loans to individual for a long period of time. Therefore, leaders should be able to appreciate the fact that utilitarian recognize that not every individual would be able to benefit from a specific decision that has been made (Carasco and Singh, 2007). Hence the emphasis that has been made in utilitarianism is on the net benefit of a deed that has resulted from the action that has been considered by the leader in a business environment. Business leaders, also have to realized that their business decisions should often be placed in a context of a “win-lose” situation. For example, the only way for a business to be able to gain market-share for a product, is for at least one of their closes competitor or firm to lose their market share, or in order for the business to increase its long-term shareholder value it will require the business to sacrifice its short term profits in favor of investing in the business, it services and products. Kantian deontology Deontological can be defined as the study of duty. Kant rejected the utilitarianism because he did not believe that people are able to predict their future consequences of their actions with any degree of certainty (Bowie, 2006). Ethical theories that were based on guesses about the future consequences appalled Kant. Kant believed that if leaders their facility for reason, they can determine with certainty their ethical duty. As to whether or not people doing their intended task would make things look good or worse (Bowie, 2006). According to Kant, duty base ethics is important for at least two kinds of people: business people and politicians. It is also a factor in understanding the responsibilities of team members. Teams are focused on achieving defined goals such as successfully introducing a new product. An employee in and organization who exhibit a duty based ethic attributes may justify his or her behavior in term of honoring the organization policies and regulations or satisfy the customer (Bowie, 2006). The duty based approach theory has been noted to emphasize more on customer satisfaction, and is a major contributor to the behavior. Thus, deontology will focus more on the action and not its effect or consequences of the action (Singer, 2005). Deontology approach is heavy on a person’s obligation, in the sense that an individual who follow these ethical paradigms believe that the greatest virtue comes from performing or doing what that individual is supposed to do. Rawls’ theory of justice Justice has been defined as the importance of getting fair treatment, equality and having rights (i.e. human rights). In the theory of ‘justice and fairness’, there are two major principles that are described in this theory. The first principle states that every individual should enjoy equal rights to fair distribution of social products such as education, food, shelter and so forth (Snoeyenbos and Humber, 2007). The second principle in the theory of ‘justice and fairness’ emphasis that if there is economic and social inequalities in a society. In distribution of resources, it should first benefit those members in the society that are disadvantage or lack (Snoeyenbos and Humber, 2007). Therefore, Rawls has been in support of redistribution of taxes and wealth to those who are economically and socially disadvantage. Rawls believes action can promote productive behavior. The workplace is where staff in an organization start to feel injustice, because organization provide a good environment where employees are able to spend most of their working hours with other employees from different background, race, religion and so forth. When money, competition and pride is at stake in an organization, both petty and serious unfairness is common such as promotion of the less competent employee for political reasons or as a result of nepotism, taking credit for another employee’s work, shifting blame, inequitable allocation of work load (Snoeyenbos and Humber, 2007). And then they may exists some double standards in the organization, for example, an employee may be assigned less work, (others may assigned more work on equal pay), employee misses deadline, employee always coming late to work and make mistakes, yet the employees is given a raise on his or her salary. The approach to fairness means that for every decision that is made, there will be individuals who will see the decision as unfair, and that they are right (Snoeyenbos and Humber, 2007). Thus,, when a leader or a manager in an organization makes hard decision that may affect employees or stakeholders in an organization, it will be difficult to come to a fair result, nor will it be possible to satisfy every employee or stakeholder (Velasquez, 2001). Generally, those employees who consider the winner in the decision will consider the action just, while those employees who consider themselves as losers will consider the action as unjust. Since criticism and disagreement are inevitable in a business environment, employers or employees should be able to do their best in order to reach a fair outcome or judgment that is based on justifiable standards and personal conscience (Velasquez, 2001). If an employer or employee need to be approved or liked by everyone, employers or employees should then avoid accepting any responsibilities that need tough choices. In addition, work burden in a company should be distributed according to employee’s abilities, and the benefits should be distributed according to employee’s needs. According to employee’s abilities because organization should realize its employee’s full potential, and this can only be achieved by distributing task in a manner that an employee can be as productive as possible. The benefits should be distributed according to employee’s needs because benefits can be utilized to promote human well-being and happiness. Rights The rights theory has stated that the best method that can be used to deal with ethical issues in an organization is to form a basis of obligation or task in-order to justify every employee’s is entitled to rights that are enjoyed by humans (Scheffler, 2003). In addition, the rights theory also put more emphasis enjoyment on human rights; thus should be independent from influencing factors (Scheffler, 2003). Rights are simply natural rights that belong to every worker by virtue of being a human being. There are two categories of rights; negative rights and positives rights, Positive rights expects individual to provide goods and services to others (Velasquez, 2001). Similarly, negative rights are aimed at stopping individual from interfering with other people from interfering with other individual freedom. Many organizations have based their human rights on the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR). The idea behind United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) is that organizations should treat the employees with dignity and respect, and be allowed to enjoy these rights and freedoms according to the declaration (Scheffler, 2003). Employees’ working environments have been found to have a major effect on the quality of life and health, turnover, longevity, and so forth. While dangerous working conditions that include workplaces that have high temperature, aren’t adequately ventilated, noisy, aren’t adequately ventilated, are in confined spaces, unsanitary, have insufficient lighting, involve dangerous chemicals, entail physical or psychological abuse from other managers or employees and in situation where physical labor exceeds employee’s capabilities. Inspite of this, IBE research that was carried in 2012 reported that only half of the FTSE100 firms’ explicity considers workers or human rights in their code of ethics. Most corporate codes of ethics address issues like harassment and bullying, anti-discrimination, respect diversity, and equal opportunities, to name a few; all of which are mentioned in the UN declaration of Human Rights (Singer, 2005). A number of core issuers considered core to business ethics, particularly those that are employment and labor related, sit within a human rights agenda (Velasquez, 2001). The latter may be viewed as one particular framework for approaching such business ethics issues. In the U.S., for instance, a 2009 article from "Gourmet" magazine reported that workers in tomatoes plantations in Florida were being forced to live in cramped houses that have no basic social amenities such as toilets or running water, in additions, workers in these tomatoes farms were denied time-off when they became ill, were physically abused and deprived of their paychecks (Singer, 2005). In less than twenty years, more than 2000 workers in these tomato farms have been freed. Lastly, carrying out a business ethically is necessarily involves respecting employees human rights in the course of the business operations. A firm that wants to be considered as ethical will be required to be mindful of human rights. This may be limited to avoiding violating human rights or take the wider approach of promoting and protecting worker’s rights in business operations. The challenge of normative ethical relativism Ethical relativism theory states that morality is relative to the human norm or behaviour of ones culture (Velasquez, 2001). That is, whether or not a deed is wrong or right will largely depend on the moral behaviour of the society at large in which the action or deed is being practised (Mackie, 2005). An action or norm may be morally correct in one society buy morally wrong in other society (Velasquez, 2001). For the relativist, same moral standards cannot be used to guide people with different culture, religion or race, i.e. moral standards can only be applied The only moral standard against which behaviours in societies can be judged accordingly are its own (Velasquez, 2001). If relativism is okay or correct, there is no common definition or standard to resolve moral disputes among members of different societies. Ethical relativism has been received with much attention as public relation practitioners become deeply involved in international businesses (Mackie, 2005). Ethical relativists have continued to argued that moral values or deeds should be regarded as relative because the opposite position for those deeds or values will imply that individuals have the right to pass judgement on others in the society against our own moral values, thereby imposing our moral codes on other people (Mackie, 2005). For example, it is moral right to eat beef in the U.S and moral wrong to each beef in India; it is moral right to drink alcohol in the U.S and moral wrong to drink alcohol in Middle Eastern countries. Therefore, by imposing one’s values or judgment on other people may destroy any cooperation that is base on goodwill and mutual trust. Conclusion In conclusion, ethical theories are useful in business because they help us decided why various actions are right or wrong. Ethical theories help people to decide whether or not various actions are wrong or right such as fraud, tax withholding, discrimination of employees etc. All ethical theories that have been discussed in this paper have been found to have various strengths because they tell us which deeds or values that may be promoted and which one may likely bring emotional response that would motivate us to actually value and promote. Lastly, what is right for one person in a business environment would be right for everyone else is a sufficiently similar case because the same reason can be justified with the same action? References Bowie, N.E. (2006). A Kantian Approach to Business Ethics. In: Donaldson, T., Werhane, P.H. and Cording, M. (Eds.) Ethical Issues in Business. A Philosophical Approach. New Jersey: Pearson Education. Carasco, E.F. and Singh, J.B. (2007). The Content and Focus of Codes of Ethics of the World’s Largest Transnational Corporations. Business and Society Review, Vol.108(1), pp.71-94. Gossling, T. (2003). The price of morality. An analysis of personality, moral behaviour, and social rules in economic terms. Journal of Business Ethics, Vol.45, No.1, pp.121-131 Mackie, J.L. (2005). Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. New York: Penguin Books, Mill, J.S. (2004). In Defense of Utilitarianism. Conduct & Character: Readings in Moral Theory. 3rd ed. Ed. Mark Timmons. California: Wadsworth Publishing. Scheffler, S. (2003). Human Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Singer, P. (2005). Practical Ethics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Snoeyenbos, M and Humber, J. (2007). Utilitarianism and Business Ethics, in Robert Frederick, ed. A Companion to Business Ethics, UK: Blackwell. Velasquez, M. G. (2001). Business Ethics Concepts& Cases, Business Ethics, Anderson university DBA Read More