Ethics, Values, and Social Responsibility - Research Proposal Example

? The corporate world in general faces varying ethical issues. In particular, the management aspect is vulnerable to different ethical issues if one will based it on what is heard from the media and the contemporary issues linked to the prevailing corporate scandals in today’s modern world. Regarding this, leaders are the ones susceptible to be linked to corporate scandals connecting to various ethical issues. The work at hand presents five most common ethical issues faced by the leaders particularly in the corporate world. Ethical Issues Facing the Leaders in the Corporate World Among the most common ethical issues facing the corporate world is fraud. Fraudulent practices are common nowadays especially in the aspects where there is money involved. People have witnessed substantial cases particularly in accounting practices. There is a necessary accounting practice ethics because this consideration is giving a certain degree of credibility and integrity of the corporate world. Leaders are vulnerable to engage in corrupt practices just to optimize generation of profit for the benefit of their advantage and the company. As a result, not disclosing the exact amount for accounting purposes and tax declaration entices the leaders or the management to go for the safest way that may be in favor for their profit generation. Here where the common fraud exists, which may have prior approval of the management or the corporate leaders. On the other hand, the work at the corporate world without question may undeniably extend to one’s personal life. This is a common scenario by which employees were constantly tracked in their online via their social networking accounts by their leaders or managers. This at some point may be a violation of their privacy and freedom of expression considering that some thoughts or gestures they initiated on the social media may be taken against them within the context of the corporate discipline. Another important ethical issue facing the leaders and the corporate world is confined within the context both external and internal to marketing. Marketing is primarily about conveying of information, and for the sake of convincing the target market, the use of deceptive schemes has become a common action that clearly at some point will also have to undergo leader’s approval. Next to marketing, another common ethical issue involving the corporate world and leaders is about paying employees. Some corporate organizations with the sheer approval of their leaders decide to pay their employees a kind of compensation which might not eventually fall on the standard. This is for the sake of optimizing profit and such direction has to be initiated for the disadvantage of the employees by not paying them the exact or right amount for their given time and effort for the company. Finally, perhaps the oldest of its kind in the array of ethical issues facing the corporate world and leaders is the issue of discrimination triggered by race, ethnic, origin, gender and sexual orientation. This is still common to exist in some organizations today where leaders may have certain bias or prejudice against certain groups of people or organizations. As a result, they have to employ relevant company policies and most of them have to be strongly integrated with the hiring process. For them, it is the best way to fire people while they are not yet hired. These are just some of the common ethical issues one may potentially raise as taking place in the corporate arena and affecting its leader’s actual credibility and integrity to lead the entire team. Knowing which of these is particularly taking the lead is the next point of the work at hand. Using the relevant related literature review concerning this issue will lead to the opportunity to rank these ethical concerns. Ranking the Ethical Issues Business leadership and corporate social responsibility have clearly become the common primary concern in the context of business ethics in the age of globalization (Pies, Beckmann & Hielscher, 2010; Selart & Johansen, 2011; Kalshoven & Boon, 2012). A certain study confirms that ethical leadership has significant impact on corporate social responsibility, and the latter affects corporate ethical values and behaviors positively (Aslan & Sendogdu, 2012). This study simply illustrates the mediating role of corporate social responsibility in ethical leaders’ on corporate ethical values and behavior. Furthermore, the application of corporate social responsibility was analyzed and found to affect employees’ satisfaction and also their general impressions of their company (Bauman & Skitka, 2012). The above findings only suggest that ethical leadership tops the main concern linked to ethical issues facing leaders affecting the corporate social responsibility. Corporate social responsibility was found to affect ethical values and behaviors. These all lead to the presence of various ethical issues as already stated above. While most concern of the corporate world is to earn, it therefore implies that accounting practice ethics may lead on the list, followed by marketing, ethics concerning paying employees, social networking ethics and discrimination. Discrimination may be on the bottom list because of the prevailing legal policies against bias and prejudice against race, ethnic, origin, gender and sexual orientation (Faley, 2011). However, all of these issues are in line with ethical leadership that as already stated may have potential impact on corporate social responsibility and eventually on the corporate ethical values and behaviors. Analysis As discussed, accounting practice ethics, ethics concerning paying employees, marketing, social networking ethics and discrimination are all in line with ethical leadership. Poor practice of accounting ethics may potentially discourage a substantial number of investors. After all, investors are looking forward to transparency (Neupane & Poshakwale, 2012). Poor ethics concerning paying employees will eventually discourage potential good employees to apply to a company with poor benefits in stored for them. Poor marketing technique with fraud will result to poor market share in the future. Ethics relevant to social networking will lead to a fast dissemination of negative feedback against an organization. After all, it is easy to share everything online today, may it be good or bad, in favor or against an organization. Discrimination on the other hand may be subject to legal policies that eventually will put an organization under legal disciplines affecting not just the leaders, but including all those concerns in the society. As ethical leadership may affect corporate social responsibility, it is important to create significant effort of enhancement for the latter which must be initiated simultaneously with changing ethical leadership for good. This should be the case because changing corporate social responsibility may also imply change in corporate ethical values, behaviors and even employees’ perception of their company (Aslan & Sendogdu, 2012; Bauman & Skitka, 2012). Therefore, it is clear why leaders have substantially invested in corporate social responsibility today just to be able to address the stated ethical issues. After all, corporate social responsibility if properly implemented will generally result to social benefit (Cramer & Bergmans, 2003). The investment in corporate social responsibility leads to the establishment of corporate ethical values and behaviors (Bauman & Skitka, 2012). Conclusion In a nutshell, corporate social responsibility is indeed a way to redefine ethical leadership in an organization, considering that business leadership and corporate social responsibility have clearly become the common primary concern in the context of business ethics in the age of globalization. For this reason, there are many leaders today who invested in corporate social responsibility as a way for them to influence the prevailing corporate ethical values and behaviors in an organization. After all, if this can be successfully implemented, it will result to a significant social benefit for the advantage of the concerned stakeholders. References Aslan, S., & Sendogdu, A. (2012). The mediating role of corporate social responsibility in ethical leader’s effect on corporate ethical values and behavior. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 58, 693-702. Bauman, C. W., & Skitka, L. J. (2012). Corporate social responsibility as a source of employee satisfaction. Research in Organizational Behavior, 32, 63-86. Cramer, J., & Bergmans, F. (2003). Learning about corporate social responsibility: The dutch experience. Burke, VA: IOS Press. Faley, R. H. (2011). When culture and the law clash: A primer on the extraterritorial implications of U.S. anti-discrimination rules and regulations. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 35(5), 670-676. Kalshoven, K., & Boon, C. T. (2012). Ethical leadership, employee well-being, and helping. Journal of Personnel Psychology, 11(1), 60-68. Neupane, S., & Poshakwale, S. S. (2012). Transparency in IPO mechanism: Retail investors’ participation, IPO pricing and returns. Journal of Banking & Finance, 36(7), 2064-2076. Pies, I., Beckmann, M., & Hielscher, S. (2010). Value creation, management competencies, and global corporate citizenship: An ordonomic approach to business ethics in the age of globalization. Journal of Business Ethics, 94(2), 265-278. Selart, M., & Johansen, S. T. (2011). Ethical decision making in organizations: The role of leadership stress. Journal of Business Ethics, 99(2), 129-143. Read More