Ethics Integrity as an Important Aspect of Moral and Ethical Issues of Modern Corporations - Essay Example

Running Head: Moral Issues Moral Issues Inserts His/Her Inserts Grade Inserts 07 July 2009 Ethics integrity is an important aspect of moral and ethical issues of modern corporations. The designation "professional" is highly desired in engendering industry and profession. Engineers take courses of action that seem on the surface to be against their economic interest because they want to protect the privilege of being known as professional. Engineers who seek admittance must demonstrate understanding of and acceptance of the profession's language. The engineering knowledge possessed by each profession is a source of power for that profession. Through their publications, meetings, assessment syllabi, and other activities, various engineering codes have historically played a role in defining and furthering the technical aspects of the engineering profession, deciding who is competent to practice in that filed and elaborating the discourse carried on by that action. Also, engineering is increasingly required to satisfy continuing education requirements in order to keep their professional status. The ethics integrity is based on the principle of fairness and moral rules. This ethics integrity moral and social responsibility issues, fair attitude towards customers and colleagues. Clients served by engineers have no choice but to rely upon their lawyers for expert advice. Engineers are assumed to have a command of a complicated and changing subject matter; that is why they have been hired. But this also means that clients are rarely able to assess the engineering professional's competence. This is true in engineering as well as in the other professions. In engineering profession, this is a more complex notion because of the issue of third parties (Bentham, 2000). Engineering ethics integrity is based on the Judeo-Christian ethic. This ethics generally considered to be the foundation of Western ethical and moral principles. "In performing professional services for a client, a (structural engineer) has the duty to have that degree of learning and skill ordinarily possessed by reputable (structural engineers), practicing in the same or similar locality and under similar circumstances" (Kardon 1999). In engendering, like duties of justice, "the standard of care" does not arise because of any culpability on the part of the organization. "The standard of care" rests upon the mere fact that there are other beings in the world whose condition can be made better. If the organization recognizes these beings and is able to improve their condition, then a "the standard of care" arises. The fact that "the standard of care" is recognized by managers of organization is demonstrated by the fact that they cause the corporations to make charitable contributions. One is hard pressed to swallow utilitarian way of thinking that such contributions may in the long run improve profitability by the formation of goodwill. In fact, the best arguments against such action are utilitarian in nature (Mill, 2002). Ethics integrity involves duties of self-improvement which are the most difficult duties of engineers to translate to an organization. Duties of self-improvement rest on the issue that one can improve his/her own condition with respect to good value or intelligence. An example is the practice of organizations paying the cost of sending managers to universities to improve their skills and knowledge. Utilitarians would undoubtedly argue that such achievement is taken to improve profits through lower costs generated from the better management the organization expects to receive from better-educated managers. Organizations would undeniably justify this practice on such utilitarian grounds. Though, the ethics must truly be stretched to translate an individual manager's education to the bottom line. A more credible explanation for such things as classes in human relations might be found in the desire to fulfill a duty for self-improvement. For example, one could argue that by failure to improve managers' knowledge of engineering ethics, a corporation has caused the public to incur greater risk of unethical conduct by the organization (Bentham, 2000). The duty of self-improvement becomes one engineers may more easily associate with business enterprise if engineers expand upon definition a bit. A commonly held and frequently cited moral rule is that business organizations have the duty to make profits. Total impact engineering provides the broad classification into which the deontological basis suggested here will fit. The classifications scheme could take the form of accounts set up for each of the duties that a n organization has chosen as applicable to it. Since doing one's responsibility has an associated impact upon profit, an account would also be created to summarize those effects over periods of time. The engineering is a key professional involved in assisting management with the task of setting responsibilities and with monitoring progress toward meeting such responsibilities. The main difference between personal and professional codes of ethics in engineering is that independence is not allowed in engineering profession. In the personal code of an engineer, independence may be defined in a professional context as a state in which one is self-reliant and not easily influenced by others. Professionals rely upon their own expertise and judgment rather than opinions, biases, or emotions of other persons. Self-determination, as an ethical concept, is prominent in the engineering profession. Indeed, all professionals should be independent in that they should not subordinate their judgment to make a client happy (Donaldson et al 2002). Engineering codes demand fair treatment of all people and high professional skills. Conflicts of moral duty come in various shapes, sizes, and intensities. We cannot anticipate all such problems. But what such conflicts have in common is both situational and philosophical. By situational engineers mean that a personal moral dilemma is experienced by the engineering professional. Some engineers are faced with a concern and, often, a hard choice situation. By philosophical engineers mean that thinking about essentials--goals, purposes, reasons--is ignited by the moral conflict. Confronting ethical dilemmas in professional field is a real task (Bentham, 2000). In engineering, professional morality demands adherence to the law. Legislation, court opinions, managerial decisions, and (especially) bureaucratic interpretations of the law are rarely crystal clear. Because of this necessary imprecision, there are many opportunities to "bend the rules" or to "find the loophole." Such behavior, by engineering professional, is not inherently wrong. Nor is it subject to prosecution or condemnation if discovered. In engineering, especially, a premium is put upon creative interpretation of regulations (and of prior interpretations). The system exists to be used, engineers are told; a clever professional takes advantage of ambiguity and resolves it in the perceived best interest of his client. This is normal professional practice (Donaldson et al 2002). If the professional disregard the code of ethics and conduct, it can lead to errors and failure, injuries and damage. The ethics integrity helps engineers to resolve moral issues and problems of moral choice. Independence is a critical concept that sets ethics apart from other professions. This is the only exclusive function that the ethical codes perform for society. In rendering an opinion the engineering professional assumes a public duty. Moreover, this public duty must transcend any employment relationship or other duty toward the client (Goodin, 1995). Work and school training helps professionals recognize importance of the ethics and morals in profession and teach them the basic rules and principles of safety and behavior patterns. Ultimately, clients, the profession, and even society itself suffer as competitive conditions force the quality of audits to deteriorate as kitchen tabling becomes more and more widespread. The political and social views of professionals do not, usually, impinge upon work-related tasks. But suppose the following scenario (Donaldson et al 2002). An auditor is, for either religious or intellectual reasons, a pacifist. The views forbid serving the military in any manner or cooperating in any vocation that encourages the development, manufacture, or distribution of military weapons. Engineers are called in to participate in auditing a major corporation and discovers that the company is engaged in research likely to result in the development of a highly. Coming to know the ethics integrity evokes the personal meaning, experience, and perception of organizational life in the minds of individual members. Gaining access to members' organizational experience helps us better understand individual and collective motives that govern their behavior and enables us to distinguish otherwise similar organizations from one another. Ethics integrity defines who we all are in a group and who (or what) we can be as members of groups (role identity) (Donaldson et al 2002). This includes the network of repeated interpersonal strategies for coping with (defending against) interpersonal and organizational events that are stressful and perceived as threatening. Discovering it involves finding out how people experience one another and observing how they handle themselves and others under stressful circumstances. It does not assume that people in organizations share the same organizational image. Nor does it assume a collective identity for organizational members. However, it does imply that organizational culture and strategies for managing internal and external affairs are the result of members' individual personalities and experiences that shape organizational meanings and experiences (Goodin, 1995). Ethics integrity is understood by analyzing transference and counter-transference of emotions, vertically between super ordinates and subordinates and horizontally among organizational members during group and interpersonal responses to critical incidents (Donaldson et al 2002). To appreciate fully the contribution of organizational identity to our understanding of organizational culture, three patterns of transference (and counter-transference) in organizations need to be examined: (1) mirroring and idealizing, (2) persecutory. Attention to the emotional attachments of human relationships, such as that found between super-ordinates and subordinates, is at the heart of psychodynamic investigations of behavior in organizations. These hierarchic interactions are often filled with many reenactments of the dependency, attachment, separation, and individuation dilemmas of parent-infant relations. The analysis of transference in organizations involves the assembly of a coherent image of interpersonal patterns of human interactions (Sen and Williams 2002). Ethics researchers must, momentarily, shift the center of experience away from themselves so that they may truly comprehend the experience of organizational members. Interpretation of individual and collective organizational meanings is the avenue to understanding organizational identity. With respect to transference and counter-transference dynamics, psychoanalytic action researchers learn to use themselves (the self as the core of the personality and interpersonal experience) as instruments of organizational study. Empathy and introspection become necessary skills in helping subjects to share feelings and ideas that previously could not be discussed (Goodin, 1995). The validity of the inter-subjective data uncovered by the analysis of transference and counter-transference phenomena in organizations also depends upon the psychoanalytic researcher's willingness to test his or her assumptions of the subject's experiences and perceptions publicly. This requires that researchers attempt to confirm or refute interpretations acquired through self-conscious acts of identification and empathy. Organizational researchers pay special attention to transferences that are repetitive, psychologically regressive, and counterproductive (Sen and Williams 2002). One's perception of the organization and his or her role identity in it is directly linked to the nature of interpersonal relationships between and among organizational participants. Authority and peer relations may rekindle frustrated (infantile, self-object) narcissistic needs among adults in work organizations. Stressful organizational events such as change in leadership, retrenchment, cutbacks, policy or budgetary revisions, and shifts of political climate can foster psychologically regressive and defensive responses among members (Darwall, 2002). The ethics integrity in engineering field settle norms and conditions of work and industry requirements. The ethics concept in engineering underlines that acting in a manner that produces the greatest amount of love, fulfillment, and "the standard of care" (Sen and Williams 2002). That is, it contends that ethical action is the one that produces the greatest amount of love of all the alternatives available. In some measure any morally wrong act of a member of the profession affects the whole filed because by its very nature the engineering has advanced itself to society as a special society deserving special privilege and therefore having special responsibilities. The point of this predicament is that attempting to regulate the morals of others in the society is at best a difficult morass. Engineers will attempt no simplistic solution in this perplexing area except to state that though individual cases must be handled separately, the ethical models of deontologism, utilitarianism, and ethical realism are useful to us. From the perspective of the partners, the engineering organization does not receive proper compensation for professional services rendered (Mill, 2002). Furthermore, clients who receive services, particularly engineering and consulting services, so cheaply, come to expect future prices at comparable bargain levels. The final determinant of ethical worth of any belief is one's own belief and justification that supports it. It puts emphasis on what is popular instead of what is necessarily correct or incorrect. Rather than offer a ethical judgment that is binding on all people, at all times, everywhere, it is flexible and variable in every situation (Darwall, 2002). The importance of ethics in corporate behavior and decision making is directly related to the power of the modern corporation to affect the lives of millions of people. In an era of sophisticated high technology, intense global competition, and pervasive media and mass marketing techniques, the stakes involved in corporate decision making are much higher than at any moment in history. A misleading claim designed to get the edge on the competition can deceive millions of consumers. A failure to comply with laws and regulations regarding the handling and discharge of toxic chemicals can poison a community's water supply or increase the risks of cancer to future generations (Mill, 2002). Insider dealing and financial manipulations can defraud thousands and cost the taxpayers billions of dollars, as we are painfully learning in the wake of the savings and loan scandal. Because the consequences of wrongdoing by business are so much greater and potentially more damaging in the era of the multinational corporation and the emerging global marketplace, government and business must work together toward what should be common goals: compliance with the law and adherence to the ethical principles underlying the law (Lippert-rasmussen, 2005). In sum, ethics integrity determines moral and ethical principles of an organization and its strategic approach in business. In fact, hierarchically channeled human interactions encourage mirroring and idealizing exchanges between super-ordinates and subordinates. The power of high position may exaggerate individual demands for admiration and feelings of grandiosity. The presence of hierarchies may perpetuate selecting and rewarding individuals with narcissistic proclivities, thereby indulging quests for power and authority by way of positions of public visibility and official importance. Similarly, executives may come to rely on their staff to mirror their larger-than-life view of themselves. Consequently, staff are unconsciously required to idealize the boss, to inflate his or her public image and sustain his or her self-worth. Some members may come to ethics integrity with their leader, regardless of the mistreatment and suspicious nature of her or his relationship. Persecuted organizations become fortresses, social defense systems that encourage the troops either to retreat from battle or to engage in a "search and destroy" mission. The fortress mentality is costly. Blame and responsibility always seem to exist outside oneself and often outside the organization. References Bentham, J. (2000). Deontology; or, The Science of Morality. BookSurge Publishing. Donaldson, T., et al. (2002). Ethical Issues in Business, 7th edn, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Darwall, S. (2002). Deontology (Blackwell Readings in Philosophy). Wiley-Blackwell. Goodin, R. E. (1995). Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Public Policy). Cambridge University Press. Lippert-rasmussen, K. (2005). Deontology, Responsibility, And Equality. Museum Tusculanum Press. Mill, S. (2002). Utilitarianism. Hackett Publishing Company; 2 edition. Sen, A, Williams, B. (2002). Utilitarianism and Beyond. Cambridge University Press. Read More