The concept of business ethics - Book Report/Review Example

The concept of business ethics The concept of business ethics is a topic that has garnered a lot of attention within the business environment. Business ethics is concerned with the relationship that exists between the organization and its stakeholders and the way it impacts on organizational performance. The book Business Ethics Manual presents a rich coverage of various issues that arise within the modern business market. The book explores the obligations that companies have to their stakeholders, corporate social responsibility plans and major issues such as bluffing that are rampant in the employment sector. It explores in depth the stakeholder theory and the way organizations push their business strategies within different market structures. It is more interesting to the audience to learn the relationship between organizational duties, employee satisfaction, and organizational performance. The main recommendation of the book is that organizations determine their duties towards the stakeholders to create a positive relationship within work place. From this angle, the book lays a foundation through which corporates can engage fulfill their ethical obligations towards optimal performance. First, the book addresses the ethical obligations that organization have towards their stakeholders be it government, employees, environment or the society at large. The strength of the book lies in its ability to provide a strategy through which organizations can establish their ethical obligations (Ciulla, Martin & Solomon, 2013). For a corporate director, the interest should be to identify those that the organization owes duty of responsibility. It is crucial to note here that the government, to a large extent, influences the way organizations behave towards their stakeholders. This argument is agreeable owing to the current efforts of the government to control organizational behavior. On this note, the book identifies that the employment laws, environmental laws, and tax policies are crucial in designing organizational acts. The implication is that leaders must pay keen attention to various laws that regulate their conduct, which forms the foundation of their conduct. For a business manager, this idea is tallies with the work of different scholars that has portrayed government regulations as a priority for any organization that intend to sustain its public image. There is a concession that the urge by the government to control organizational behavior is a strategy to curb oppressive acts that have been propagated in the traditional business market. The focus on the stakeholder theory becomes an important address of business ethics within the discourse of this book. The reference to Freedman, the father of stakeholder theory, makes this book credible and appealing to the reader. According to Freedman, the organization owes the organizational stakeholders the duty to maximize benefits on their behalf. The stakeholders include any person who in one way or the other bears a dependency relationship with the firm. Stakeholders may include the workers, financiers, the society, competitors, or even suppliers. At this point, the reader may find it interest to identify the great obligation of a company has and the complexity of fulfilling these duties. The Freedman stakeholder theory seems to crash with the capitalist ideas that suggested that organization only have a duty to optimize returns in whatsoever means. The book overturns the notion that has persisted in the past that organizations are profit generators with an aim of making as much profit as possible. However, the book is keen to establish that there exists a big conflict as organizations push strategies to maximize income, while the stakeholders push their demands (Ciulla, Martin & Solomon, 2013, Pp. 263-269). While this may appear as a contradictory approach to ethics by a reader, it presents a real scenario that has become more common in the business land scape. The ability of the author to focus on the traditional capitalistic market structures provides a good platform to consider the role of ethics in the society. In a business organization, ethics regulate the interpersonal relationship and the way each stakeholder in the organization is treated. In the capitalistic market structures, the society suffered from employee oppression and existence of individualistic policies that only benefited the organization (Ciulla, Martin & Solomon, 2013, Pp. 638). 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. However, the book notes that there is a paradigm shift in the way modern competitive business structures are led. Today, 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. Resultantly, dissatisfied employees have little work output and hard to align to the business goals and objectives. The main argument here is that modern trade does not allow companies to prioritize profits without considering the plight of other stakeholders. The concept of corporate social responsibility is an important matter of discussion in this book. The readers will find it interesting to note the controversy that arises in corporate social responsibility strategies. Corporate social responsibility is the role that companies play in satisfying the needs of the public, the environment, and other stakeholders that are linked to the business (Ciulla, Martin, & Solomon, 2013). CSR strategy is crucial as there is believe that corporate social responsibility has a value for the organizational profits. While it is clear that most companies benefit the society, it is questionable whether they spend their profits to help the society or they just use this strategy for selfish interests. Friedman seems to agree with the latter idea and argues that companies do well only when such good acts contribute to the company’s profit optimization strategy (Ciulla, Martin & Solomon, 2013, Pp. 249-253). The idea is that companies cannot do favor to the society, if such an act would reduce their profits in the long run. This author seems to concur with other works that have considered CSR as an expensive strategy that organization should shun. From the justification of this book, is apparent that the contemporary market conditions have become a great challenge for many business organizations especially when it comes to implementing CSR approaches. To begin with, there has been great competition squeezing the profit margins thin, making it impossible for companies to risk losing their profits. Next, there has been great pressure to reduce expenses within organizations to ensure that companies survive during the harsh market conditions. Therefore, it has become a dilemma to spend the profits on social responsibilities or avoid such expenses. Resultantly, many companies have avoided expenses that come along with CSR approaches to remain profitable (Ciulla, Martin, & Solomon, 2013). Evidently, companies use CSR strategies as marketing strategies to attract the attention of their customers and to increase their profits. However, the book is keen to portray both sides of the same coin by depicting possible positive outcomes of CSR strategies. Most students of management will agree with the idea that organization use CSR strategies as a positioning strategy to win the employee loyalty. The book makes reference to the ideas of stone on the relationship of CSR to the organizational performance. The responsibility of the organization is to create a positive relationship with their employees to stimulate their work output essential in accomplishing management goals. It seems to agree with the words of Stone that portray social responsibility as an ethical obligation of organizations that intend to remain top in the society. The idea of the book to shed light on the costs of failing to implement social responsibility within a business is mind-changing for many scholars. First, organizations that ignore employee issues are likely to face disloyalty from their employees, which will eventually be expensive to the organization. Disloyal employees are unwilling to pursue management goals and will constantly look for opportunities to exit the organization. High employee turnover is manifestation of poor worker management within an organization. Secondly, organizations that disobey employment laws will face legal consequences that will tarnish its image and drive away their target customers (Ciulla, Martin & Solomon, 2013). The point that the book passes to the reader is that an employee is an important stakeholder in the workplace, and the organization behavior towards them is crucial for accomplishment of its goals. Next, the book shifts it focus on various controversial behavior that have become more familiar within the modern business environment. The concept of bluffing takes a considerable part of this book. This is one of the areas that readers will find new but interesting while taking tour in the chapters of this book. They will discover the extent to which organizational behavior can be manipulated either to the advantage of an organization or that of other stakeholders. Bluffing is defined as the act of concealing certain information regarding an enterprise as a strategy to influence the decision making process of worker or consumer. Bowie’s major concern is whether an organization will profit from bluffing in both the short and long-term (Ciulla, Martin & Solomon, 2013. Pp. 48-50). Like other readers, one may feel that organization that bluff stand a chance of attracting more employees as well as customers. Through bluffing, an organization will hide certain undesirable information that would tarnish its image. For instance, an organization may fail to inform the employees about certain salary deductions during the interview stage. Therefore, the employees will be pleased with the gross salary without knowing that their net salary will be much below their net expectations. When they learn this, they will have signed binding contracts whose termination may have negative connotations. Resultantly, the organization will profit from deceiving the workers to attract them to join their team force. However, an analysis of long-term consequences of bluffing will garner attention from organizational manager that consider long-term objectives as a priority for their business. The book clearly outlines various negative outcomes of bluffing that may affect organizational performance. First, bluffing ignores the concept of transparency that has become more desirable within modern business environments. Transparency refers to the act of providing workers with clear information on every aspect of business to ensure that they make well informed decisions. Employees commit themselves to organizations that abide to the principle of transparency. Secondly, when employees detect that there is bluffing, they will lose motivation leading to poor performance. Besides, such employees will have a negative attitude after learning that they were duped to commit themselves to the job. The outcome is that they will rebel by overproducing as a way of expressing their dissatisfaction. The author feels that there is greater loss than benefits in bluffing for the modern business systems (Ciulla, Martin & Solomon, 2013). The key learning for managers is that concealing important information from the stakeholders has dire consequences in the long-term. The question of whether bluffing is ethical becomes the next agenda in the business ethics manual. Carr’s analysis of the appropriateness of business bluffing is confusing and may demand critical thinking from the reader’s side (Ciulla, Martin & Solomon, 2013, P. 43). Carr appeals to the organizations right of privacy to argue for bluffing. Notably, companies reserve the right to decide which information they can give to their employees and which they should not. Evidently, organizations use this right to defend their negotiation plans and to present the company’s image as good as they can. The question that readers may ask here is whether a company’s image should be protected through such as strategy. However, there is evidence that companies are coward to portray their organization as they to avoid possible negative consequences that may hinder their business performance. Therefore, exercising the right to privacy of information may contribute be ethical. From a critical angle, this argument is controversial and may ignite a heated debate in academic world. As much as the management reserves the right to hide certain information, it is an inappropriate behavior to hide information for selfish benefit especially when such information is crucial for decision making. The main stand of the text is that, no matter from which point the issue is observed, it is unethical to bluff in business. The broadness of the book in terms of covering various ethical issues within the business environment makes it a recommendable book for management students within the college level. It presents a diverse consideration of various issues such as employee loyalty, cheating in business, work motivation, and stakeholder importance that are relevant for young readers. In addition, the book lays a good foundation for the managers such as human resource managers who are in the risk of cheating while influencing employee turn-over. At the same time, it gives an insight to organizational marketing managers who are likely to be confronted with ethical issues while interacting with the customers. The concept of customer loyalty with the ethics manual is of great significance to management. Fraudulent advertisement is tantamount to bluffing and its consequences can be frustrating for organizations (Ciulla, Martin & Solomon, 2013). Next, the book can help managers to resolve the dilemma of striking a balance between corporate social responsibility and employee remuneration. A critical reader will understand the value of fair remuneration owing to the close relationship between pay and production. The in-depth coverage of issues within this book will eliminate confusion for both managers and those planning to engage in business leadership in future. At the same time, the ability to keep an interesting tone makes it an all-time reader for people across the world. In conclusion, the book Business ethics manual is a vivid presentation of ethical issues that are familiar within work place. The book deeply covers the issues of ethical obligations, stakeholder management, business irregularities and ties them to organizational production. The main argument of the book is that organizations have an obligation to design business strategies that optimize benefits for its stakeholders. It refers to the concept of stakeholder theory to dissect the extent to which key players in business influences the behavior of a firm. Besides, the text cracks the dilemmas that have considerably affected organization productivity. A good example is the corporate social responsibility issues that present organizations with a situation where they have to choose between minimizing expenses and satisfying their employee’s needs. Issues such as bluffing are comprehensively addressed and their benefits and costs are clearly outlined. The significance is to shed light on matters that business managers must consider while deciding which way to go. The broadness and depth of this book makes it an interesting reader for both students of management as well as practitioners. To achieve the value for this book, readers are challenged to think critically along the discussions of the author to deduce the right way to go while implementing business decisions. From this perspective, this book will set a strong launch pad for development of ethical behavior within modern business organizations. References Ciulla, J. B., Martin, C. W., & Solomon, R. C. (2013). Honest Work: A Business Ethics Reader. New York: Oxford University Press. Read More