The Growth of Business Organizations - Essay Example

A business organization’s environment may not be susceptible to change, and this could continue for several years. Such organizations are characterized by stability and predictability. However, there could be business organizations that are significantly influenced by the changes that transpire in their environment. In such instances, the business organization could undergo intricate, frequent, and rapid changes (Dyer & Ross, 2008, p. 137). Businesses should adopt changes according to their environmental factors. A dynamic business environment adopts changes quickly according to the surrounding issues; such as government policies, availability of employees, and competition from other business organizations in the field. 

The more important business functions are facilities and security, finance, human resources, information technology, legal requirements and compliance with the same, manufacturing, marketing and sales, operations, research and development, and inventory, order fulfillment, shipping, and receiving (Snedaker, 2007, pp. 225 – 226).

Any contingency plan has to consider these functions. Thus, the incident response (IR) plan concentrates on immediate response. In case the attack increases in ferocity, the disaster recovery (DR) plan or business continuity (BC) plan has to be undertaken. The DR plan focuses on restoring systems at the original location, after the occurrence of the disaster. On the other hand, the BC plan is implemented along with the DR plan, in instances where the damage is substantial and ongoing. In other words, this combined intervention is reserved for situations, in which something more than the simple restoration of information and resources related to information is required. The purpose of the BC plan is to establish the critical business functions at a different location (Whitman & Mattord, 2011, p. 212).  Appropriate planning will save an organization from critical situations. Plans such as disaster recovery and business continuity will help in restoring the system to normalcy, in an efficient manner.

Human Systems Integration is a system that brings about the integration of human capabilities, their limitations, and preferences into an engineering system. It brings business and engineering cultures closer to a human-centric mechanism, which produces significant performance and cost advantages. These benefits would not have been possible, but for this initiative. All the same, Human Systems Integration demands a cultural change that should commence with the organizational leadership (Booher, 2003, p. xv). Human systems integration would benefit the organization by enhancing the capacity of the workers, while simultaneously reducing costs.

Business organizations should be socially responsible and should conform to the extant social standards, values, and ethics. In the 2000s, several financial scandals surfaced in the US, which served to create disgust and distrust in the public towards the corporate sector. To rectify this untenable and unwelcome situation, the US Congress passed the Sarbanes – Oxley Act (Ferrell, Hirt, & Ferrell, 2008, p. 39).

This Act made securities fraud a crime and significantly enhanced the penalties for corporate fraud. The managers of a company have to necessarily comply with the existing laws and regulations. Companies face difficulties with the law when they indulge in irresponsible activities, unethical acceptable. Nevertheless, there are some activities, which are not illegal, despite being classified as unethical by society  (Ferrell, Hirt, & Ferrell, 2008, p. 39). With time, change transpires in both legal and ethical requirements.

Ethical behavior can be influenced by the objectives set for the business, in its entirety, and the goals established for specific departments and employees. When a company’s managers impose unrealistic goals upon their employees, there could be a significant increase in dishonest practices, and misdeeds, as employees could resort to such activities, to protect themselves (Boone & Kurtz, 2012, p. 46).

Another contributing factor for promoting unethical behavior is the unbearable pressure placed on employees to perform faster, due to the Internet economy of the present day. A few of the companies have attempted to encourage ethical behavior, and to this end, they have taken concrete steps to provide support to employees who are faced with a dilemma (Boone & Kurtz, 2012, p. 46).

It would be desirable, for every employee to be made an ethical leader at his particular level in the firm, as every employee should be cognizant of the problems being envisaged and should be willing to promote and preserve the standards of the organization  (Boone & Kurtz, 2012, p. 47). This does not hold good, in general, and in such instances, it is the stakeholders of a firm that are significantly affected by unethical conduct.

When there is unethical behavior at the workplace, the results can be a serious injury to personal lives and lost earnings. It has been estimated, in a recent survey that 7% of their annual revenues were not realized by companies, due to fraudulent activity. However, companies that admitted to a very high degree of ethical behavior experienced sustained growth  (Boone & Kurtz, 2012, p. 41). In addition, customers prefer to deal with ethical companies. The social responsibility of a firm requires its management to accord equal importance to profit, consumer satisfaction, and the well–being of society, while assessing the performance of the firm. It has been noticed that businesses behave in a socially responsible manner, as this is required by the law, improves their image, or the management is convinced that it is the ethical course of action to be adopted.