Corporate Governance and Ethical Responsibility - Research Paper Example

? Corporate Governance and Ethical Responsibility BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE Corporate Governance and Ethical Responsibility IntroductionThere are significantly-broad ethical problems occurring at Universal Human Care Hospital, involving lack of stakeholder accountability for improper medical actions and negligence on behalf of the hospital’s Executive Committee and Regional Director Compliance Manager that have failed in providing adequate investigations into a number of patient deaths occurring due to alleged legal non-compliance by nurses and physicians. Dr. DoRight, the hospital President, is inter-twined into an ethical conundrum and challenge in attempting to rectify these problems. The Involved Stakeholders The most paramount stakeholders involved in the situation at the hospital are the patients, those who are guaranteed duty of care under established tort laws. When the standard of care has been breached by medical practitioners and damage can be proven as a result, patients can take appropriate legal action (Johnson, 2010). Duty of care guarantees compliance to established Federal statutes. Secondary stakeholders, internally, are the physicians and nurses accountable for ensuring compliant medical procedures and patient oversight. Dr. DoRight must work with these staff members daily ensuring adequate supervision of their activities. Concurrently, this stakeholder group maintains certain protections under employment law that mandate the extent to which Dr. DoRight can intervene and establish disciplinary procedures. A third stakeholder group is the governance board charged with overseeing hospital operations and strategic developments. The Executive Committee and Regional Compliance Manager have responsibilities for ensuring compliance to established legalities in the medical field. In tandem, the governance stakeholders must ensure alignment of operational activities with established hospital regulations developed internally. Conflicts of Interest with Stakeholders The first conflict of interest requiring analysis is the relationship between Dr. DoRight and the governance board members. The governance system maintains responsibility for ensuring the publicized integrity and reputation of the hospital, which is a fundamental form of corporate protectionism. Dr. DoRight’s allegations (and they are only currently allegations) of staff misconduct poses future, potential reputation problems for the hospital if investigation determines that several years have passed without taking appropriate action for criminal misconduct by nurses and physicians. The governance board and Dr. DoRight also maintain responsibility for ensuring duty of care for patients, thrusting them all into a significant conflict of interest for protecting both the hospital public image and also ensuring patient standards of care. Additionally, the many corporations and community organizations that conduct business with the hospital pose another conflict of interest for Dr. DoRight. Dr. DoRight has received numerous accolades for excellence in executive function, including the Medical Business Executive of the Year award in 2011. Dr. DoRight must determine whether to spare his reputation that has been gleaned through years of community and corporate trust-building whilst also maintaining responsibility to expose legal non-compliance that jeopardizes patient safety and security. Dr. DoRight likely asks himself whether self-protectionism or community/corporate stakeholder needs should be considered the most primary objective when considering what he believes is occurring in the organization. Has Dr. DoRight Fulfilled His Ethical Obligations? Dr. DoRight has not fully fulfilled his ethical obligations in this case. He certainly took the appropriate steps by informing his superiors (those with power to investigate and punish these acts) which does speak toward his maintaining some form of ethical foundation and ethical value system. However, tort law can also provide potential consequences that give him personal liability for failing to compel his superiors to take the situation seriously and investigate all alleged wrongdoings. Additionally, Title VII of the EEOC clearly defines the role of supervisor as one who is in direct control over another worker’s daily job function (Deschenaux, 2012). If negligence in investigating the alleged crimes by internal stakeholders can be proven, it is likely Dr. DoRight, despite his effort to urge his superiors to look into these allegations and satisfy ethical obligations, could be found negligent. The concept of moral and ethical relativism also applies in this situation when attempting to determine whether Dr. DoRight has completely adhered to his ethical obligations. Those who prescribe to this philosophy strongly iterate that there is no universally accepted, majority socially-approved framework to determine what is actually right versus wrong in society (Blackford, 2010). As such, relativists believe that society should be tolerant of the actions and behaviors of others without maintaining an underpinning moral judgment construct (Swoyer, 2003). With this conception in mind, Dr. DoRight has then fulfilled his ethical obligations by bringing the issue to the attention of those empowered to determine an appropriate course of action or bring reprimand to the alleged guilty parties. Since relativism indicates that not everyone in society maintains the same principles and values as it pertains to ethical responsibility, Dr. DoRight could have completely negated informing others and simply stayed dedicated to maintaining his own reputation and that of the hospital. The Deontological Approach to Ethics Deontology asserts that members of society must adhere to a set of established principles (e.g. truth, honesty or morality) and act accordingly regardless of the consequences of this action (Cody & Lynn, 1992). It is a duty-based, rule-based ethical stance which ascribes judgment to the tangible motives held by a person performing an action rather than the means by which an end was achieved so long as the motive was considered duty-based and intrinsically good. Deontology demands that humanity be treated as an end rather than a means. With this definition in mind, Dr. DoRight has fulfilled a deontologist’s viewpoint of appropriate ethical behavior in this case. When he realized that there were potential criminal actions occurring with staff members not ascribing to established laws relevant to the medical field, he immediately considered the impact on patients and reported the allegations for the pursuit of investigation by his superiors. Though there are implied conflicts of interest about securing reputation of himself and the organization in the case study, under deontology perspectives Dr. DoRight has prescribed to the deontological view of moral good under a foundation of protecting humanity and their rights. Under this same deontological view, however, the governance board that did nothing to investigate the allegations raised by Dr. DoRight would be judged quite negatively for failing to meet their ethical obligations. Though the case study did not specifically indicate the motivations for why DoRight’s superiors failed to report and examine whether the accusations were legitimate, it could be logically assumed that it had to do with trying to protect the public brand for hospital quality, efficiency and overall excellence. DoRight’s receipt of awards by external stakeholder groups give the organization a great deal of positive publicity that serves to improve revenues, patient trust, and perhaps even receipt of grants and private investment. Clearly, under the deontological view of ethics, the governance board with absolute accountability to investigate the stakeholders involved with non-compliant behavior seems to prescribe to no established ethical good or ethical code as it pertains to ensuring patient safety. The deontologist would strongly chastise the governance team for failing to elicit self-sacrifice (especially as it relates to reputation damage control) in order to benefit the needs of humanity. The Utilitarianism Principle Utilitarianism is a hedonistic set of values, one that involves maximizing one’s own utility as a primary motivation for a specific set of behaviors. This ethical stance maintains the belief that “there is no morally acceptable sacrifice that should superimpose going beyond the basic call of duty” (Hooker, 2010, p.151). Utilitarianism applauds seeking utility as the primary means to an end with much less concern over the consequences of achieving this. A person prescribing to this philosophy of ethics would recognize that there are mitigating factors in society and the professional environment that mandate avoiding a life of self-imposed hardship and self-denial in order to help others (Hooker, 2010). Having described utilitarianism, the conception can be applied to Dr. DoRight in the case study. If following this doctrine of ethics, then Dr. DoRight has satisfied all of his obligations by simply reporting his concern over legal non-compliance occurring by nurses and doctors at the hospital. By appealing to his superiors to investigate the allegations, he is protecting humanity without sacrificing his own reputational needs and securing the utility that he receives by being a trusted and awarded member of the organization. The utilitarianism view of proper ethical behavior would judge Dr. DoRight properly by being diligent in following a moral code, satisfying established internal policies regarding seeking authority intervention, and also avoiding potential defamation allegations that could stem from those being targeted for criminal behavior. Utilitarianism would likely be torn between whether to judge negatively or applaud the behavior of the governance team in not providing adequate investigations. Though utilitarianism would support maximization of utility by the governance team, there should be some form of benevolence associated with satisfying the call of duty. Established medical malpractice laws impose a considerable amount of potential liability on the governance team, under most national tort laws, that could, in this case, rather easily allege negligence on behalf of the governance team if it is later proven that the nurses and physicians are actually performing illegal behaviors that endanger the duty of care. It is important to recognize that even though utilitarianism respects hedonistic ethical behaviors, it does not completely negate the need for benevolence when considering the needs and security of many different stakeholders. The utilitarianism approach to ethics can also be applied to employee privacy rights established by law and also supported or rejected by this view of acceptable ethics. Research has indicated that there are virtually no established legal precedents involving monitoring and surveillance of employees in the workplace. There are no Federal laws in place that make this action illegal in all fifty states, thus when legal disputes occur by disgruntled employees who have been videotaped (as one example) it is very difficult to find judgment in favor of the employee under established state common law. Utilitarian viewpoints would likely provide judgment in favor of the governance team if it were to use surveillance and monitoring techniques to identify the potential damages that are being allegedly caused by improper nurse and physician behaviors. The utility of all majority stakeholders in the organization is being threatened if these allegations are accurate and truthful, thus maximization of majority utility rather than securing the rights of non-compliant, criminal stakeholders. It would be relatively easy under this ethical view and with lack of supporting precedents finding in favor of employees due to monitoring for the governance board to fully investigate this situation and also satisfy the utilitarianism view of ethics. Conclusion This ethical case was a prime example of conflicting ethics that could pose serious consequences as it pertains to individual and group liabilities and negligence claims under existing tort and Federal laws. Whether taking the deontological view or the utilitarianism view of ethics as a judgment framework, it is clear that more should be done at the hospital in the case study to ensure patient safety and guarantee accountability for duty of care. Dr. DoRight, after analyzing all facts and law established for this type of scenario, should be more forthright in pressuring his superiors to investigate these problems to avoid long-term problems and legalities. References Blackford, Russell. (2010). Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape, Journal of Evolution and Technology, 21(2), pp.53-62. Cody, W.J. & Lynn, R.R. (1992). Honest Government: An Ethics Guide for Public Service. Westport, CT: Praeger. Deschenaux, J. (2012). Supreme Court Tries to Define Supervisor, Society for Human Resource Management. Retrieved February 2, 2013 from http://www.shrm.org/LegalIssues/EmploymentLawAreas/Pages/Supreme-Court-Define- Supervisor.aspx Hooker, Brad. (2011). The Demandingness Objection, in Chappell, Timothy, The Problem of Moral Demandingness: New Philosophical Essays, Palgrave-MacMillan, p.151. Johnson, Eric E. (2010). Medical Malpractice/Professional Negligence. Retrieved February 2, 2013 from http://eejlaw.com/m/torts_professional_negligence_medical_malpractice_slideshow.pdf Swoyer, Chris. (2003). Relativism: Section 1.2, Stanford University. Retrieved February 1, 2013 from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/#1.2 Read More