Ethics and Social Responsibility - Coursework Example

Ethics and Social Responsibility College: Ethics and Social Responsibility In the business environment, ethics play a critical role in controlling and regulating the organizational behaviour. Ethics define what is right or wrong as far as organizational behaviour is concerned and provide a strategy to influence the relationship among the various stakeholders in the organization. In the past, organizational misconduct occurred due to the failure of the management to control the organizational behaviour, underpinning the organizational crisis that characterized this period. Emergent ethical theories provide organizations with approaches that define the path they should follow while creating their business path. Various authors point out that much of the world faced a financial crisis that was fed by unethical conduct and lax of oversight to express the negligence of ethical conduct in the business environment. Some of the conduct underlying this crisis is now considered scandalous, yet little moral reflection had been invested in the practices involved. Today, the management have a role to reflect on the business crisis that existed to model new ethical strategies to ensure that the right conduct is deployed in their organization and that there is no risk for future business crisis. Unethical misconduct created an unhealthy competition that lead to the global business crisis. In the olden business environment, investors used the capitalist approach to dominate the market and control the income in the business environment. By breeding a monopolistic competition, the strong business investors protected their selfish business interests and oppressed the other investors in the market. Monopolists dominate the market and create barriers of market entry, preventing other investors from getting in the market. Brenkert & Beauchamp (2010) point out that the capitalist market provide one with the absolute right to use some properties and to prevent other from using it. This raises ethical issues as to whether the market behaviour is acceptable and to the good of all the market stakeholders. In the recent past, there has been a wide criticism of monopolistic competition due to its effect on the society. While it hinders the entry of some new customers, it also oppresses the society by overcharging them. The monopolists dominate the market, set oppressive product prices and control the economy. This kind of business behaviour leads to financial crisis in the society as it exploits them and leaves other investors at the verge of collapsing. On this note, it is clear that capitalism is one of the unethical business behaviour that led to the financial crisis. Unethical internal organizational behaviour led to the development of business global financial crisis. In a business organization, ethics regulate the interpersonal relationship and the way each stakeholder in the organization is treated. In the pre-crisis period, the society suffered from employee oppression and existence of individualistic policies that only benefited the organization. Business success depended on poor treatment of the employees through overworking, poor salaries, poor employee appraisal and poor working conditions. In short, the management were more concerned with the wellbeing of the organization and forgot the worker welfare. For organization to succeed, they must provide the workers with opportunities to grow as the organizations grow to ensure that they have a long term association with the organization. Employee satisfaction is on the major issues that determine the success of an organization not only in the short term but also in the long term of the organization. Poorly paid employees are withdrawn from the business and have little incentive to remain within the company in the long run (Mäkinen & Kourula, 2012). Resultantly, dissatisfied employees have little work output and hard to align to the business goals and objectives. As a result, organizations that fail to implement ethical organizational behaviours are bound to fail at some point, leading to global crisis. The lax in oversight pin points out that there laxity in the implementation of organizational ethics by both the management and the government. In a business environment, the government is the oversight body that implements policies that govern how organizations behave within the market. The government set rules and regulation to discourage monopolistic market and that prevent exploitation of the public. In the pre-crisis period, the government portrayed laxity in modelling regulations that encourage healthy business competition within the market. This gave the investors an opportunity to exploit the public by raising the prices of products within the market. The government is also responsible for regulation the business organizations on the need to protect the employee welfare and to reduce oppression in the employment sector. The harsh treatment of the employees within th employment sector is associated with the government’s failure to safeguard the welfare of the employees on the employment market (Manzoni & Dávila, 2010). On the other hand, the management portrayed laxity in implementing ethical behaviour within the organization. Treating the employees harshly raises the question of work morality and employment rights. The lack of commitment on the part of the government and the organizational managers to secure the public rights is a show lax in oversight. In the contemporary business environment, ethics govern every aspect of organizational behaviour. A number of ethical theories have been put forward to provide the paths that investors should follow while resolving the ethical dilemmas that exist within the business environment. One of the ethical theories is the termed as the theory of egoism that provides the forces that guide investors when positioning themselves in the business environment. The Egoism theory states that right actions are those that best satisfy the interests of a person (Casali, 2011). The ethical concerns that arise from this theory is whether self-interest is rational or meant to benefit only an individual. The capitalists seem to have used egoism in the irrational sense to pursue their self-interest at the expense of others. They felt that it was right to dream about their own goals without caring for the other investors, employees or eve the environment. They believed in hoarding goods and dominating the selling market. While this may be a reasonable business investment idea, the egoism theory of ethical behaviour points out that personal interests should not interfere with that of others. On this ground, it is possible to judge capitalists as the people who contributed to unethical behaviour and hence the cause of the global financial crisis. The utilitarianism theory provides a basis for decision making within the business environment. This theory declares right actions as those that provide the greatest pleasure for the most number of people. This theory implies that the impact of an action, the pleasure that it brings and the people that it impacts is the basis for judging its rightfulness (Casali, 2011). For business organizations, right actions are one that benefits most members of the stakeholders. On this note, the employees should evaluate the rightness and the wrongness of an action depending on the way it impacts on the organization. Principally, the organization should take actions that benefit everyone in the business and avoid harm to any party. In the traditional business environment, managers were posed with the dilemma of working on employee appraisal at the expense of the organizational profits, or neglecting the employee welfare and paying attention to the business profits. The organizations felt that there was need maximize profits by paying workers low salaries, neglecting the environment and introducing long working hour schedule to optimize on the output. While this was a short term solution to the problem, it was the reason why the global financial crisis emerged and the organization sank down in a moment of business crisis. An analysis of the utilitarianism theory points out that the global financial crisis was a result of accumulated unethical behaviours. The behavioural theories have come up to provide an approach to personal organizational behaviour. In the business scope, the management have a role to maintain healthy social relationships that promote harmony and peace within an organization. The behavioural theories judge provides the ethics that the managers should use while modelling business decisions. According to these theories, the right behaviour is one that paves way for every person in the work environment to live happily with the other and avoid misconduct within the organization. For instance, communication is one of the significant channels of expressing personal opinions within an organization. Ethically, every employee has the right to express their opinions and the management should create this opportunity to create harmony in the work place. The global financial crisis was as a result of numerous industrial strikes in the business environment. As poor communication policies existed during this time, the workers expressed their opinions by launching industrial strikes and others quitting their jobs. This business imperfection resulted to loss of healthy interpersonal behaviours, followed by economic losses due to loss of business focus (Hershkowitz & Lin, 2002). The little emphasis on behavioural approaches of business streamlining in many business organizations resulted to poor organizational performance and great economic losses. In the contemporary business environment, there is great emphasis on behavioural approach to business management. One way that modern business manager can learn from the occurrence of the business crisis is making a moral reflection to avoid being embroiled in the business financial scandals in their future. On this ground, it is crucial for the organizations to make a close examination on the reasons behind the financial crisis and to make a corrective action in their business strategy. Each organization should use the past experience to design a business strategy and as an expression of their value on learning from the mistakes of others. The organizations should make note on how unethical behaviour resulted in the fall of organizations. Monopolistic organizations failed after they had expressed they had allowed greed to drive them and neglected the plight of their customers and employees. These organizations lost customer and employees loyalty, which in the long term resulted to failure of the organizations. An analysis of poor organizational behaviours can help business managers in developing cohesive social relationships and promoting harmony within the business environment (Bertocci, 2009). In addition, a moral reflection will allow organizations to achieve high integrity and develop a better strategy to maximize output within the business environment. On this note, organizations need to make a business reflection to learn from the past and plan their business renovation strategies. The government in every country have the role to remain active in regulating the business environment. Under this role, the government needs to develop a strategy to regulate unhealthy competition within the business environment by discouraging monopolistic competition that breeds exploitation of the public. The regulations need to provide all investors to survive in the market, so that the public benefits from competitive price mechanisms. Secondly, the government needs to regulate individual organizations to ensure that they maintain high ethical standards in the work environment (Albareda et al, 2008). The government should regulate worker salaries, the social corporate responsibilities and provide environment regulations. For instance, the government should establish minimum wages in the employment sector to ensure that the employees’ rights are upheld and that organization work within the ethical framework. This way, it is possible for the government to ensure that ethical standards are maintained in the business environment. In conclusion, a moral reflection is the only way for organizations to learn from the past experiences and develop a strategy to reform their ethical standards. The global financial crisis resulted from unethical behaviour in the business environment and laxity among the oversight bodies. The business investors paid attention to personal interests, seeking to optimize profits at the expense of ethical organizational behaviour. Capitalism and monopoly dominated the market, leading to public oppression. The management choose to optimize their profits by neglecting the welfare of their workers, hence promoting worker oppression. Disregard for ethics resulted to the failure of these organizations. Reflecting on these issues that lead to the global financial crisis provides a platform for organization to shape their business strategies. To the government, it gives them the incentive to take up their oversight role to design regulations that sustain modest organization behaviour. 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