Decision-Making and Ethics Term Paper

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Ethics

Employees and business management personal are taught business ethics as a fundamental guideline. It is tasked with assigning a particular meaning and role to business on the whole. Taking ethical decisions entails keeping certain aspects in mind. Written below is a brief argument on the points regarding ethics and a scenario is setup where business ethics are employed.

In layman words, business ethics entails working within reasonable means in a financial environment. Some particular aspects are required to achieve that (Brusseau). The decisions are guided by principles, comprehending the facts, making a valid argument and lastly ethics basically entails discerning between right and wrong (Brusseau). The overall result is secondary to the process at hand. The end result consists of constructing and making valid arguments. Hence, business ethics isn't really brainwashing. It's just fine tuning. The conclusions are formed from transparent values, confirmed facts and viable arguments (Brusseau).

Keeping business ethics in perspective, there are questions pertaining the roles and responsibilities which the corporations and leaders should have apart from producing revenue, the academic world commenced work on ethics until only recently (Brusseau). The very first international scale academic conference on business ethics took place in 1974 at University of Kansas. A textbook was penned subsequent to the conference and courses were taught in business schools as well (Brusseau). Workers need to form their own principles, find a company which promotes those principles, according to Larron C. Harper, the director of both graduate and executive education programs at Samford University's School of Business. Candidates should inquire about company values whilst applying at a firm (Brusseau). Then, the candidate must ensure that those values are upheld in reality, not just limited to a memo.

Responsibilities of employee and employer are closely tied with each other, according to John C. Knapp, PhD (Archibald, 2007). Knapp is the director and professor of The Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility based at Georgia State University, who remains in constant contact with Birmingham leaders.

For all sizes of organizations, Knapp stated that good ethics and good relationships are closely tied (Archibald, 2007). When questions and candid conversation isn't allowed, then one should reflect for a moment and ponder the reason. Knapp thinks there is something missing in the relationship. The competent corporations allow freedom of questions and delivering concrete answers, according to William I. Sauser, Jr., PhD (Archibald, 2007). Sauser, a management professor at Auburn University thinks that firms should calculate ethics during time of promotion, rewarding the most ethical (Archibald, 2007). Harper thinks that employees need to pursue a particular format for questions and evade any pessimistic retorts like 'I don't think' and 'why should we'. A better approach is to suggest alternate directions.

Analysis

Ethical decision making influences not just our professional life (Swinton, 2007). Which dress are you wearing today? What were the working conditions of the labors who made it? Are you content with those conditions? Hence, certain aspects are taken in consideration while taking ethical decisions (Swinton, 2007).

Being ethical can sometime entail stepping out of confines of law. Certain actions are possible sometimes but not ethical at the same time, which corroborates the case of cloning possible with biotechnology (Swinton, 2007). This form of ethical decision making is quite difficult, since the consequences and implications are far beyond the comprehension of the human mind and knowledge. Listen to yourself-when taking decision solely isn't enough, and then take a collective decision based on their experience and knowledge to reach an informed decision (Swinton, 2007). The next step is assembling all the facts. What are the known quantities and unknown quantities? Who is affected by the decision? Were they kept in the loop (Swinton, 2007)?

Assess the options after that. Different ethical methods exists which assist in making the best ethical decision

a.

Utilitarian Approach-this approach maximizes good and minimizes harm

b.

Right Based Approach-which line of action keeps everyone rights intact?

c.

Fairness or Justice Approach-which action treats people fairly?

d.

Common Good Approach-which action focuses on quality of life of the concerned?

e.

Virtue Approach-which action keeps in mind the character strengths of your choice?

Once the decision is made, then implement it with immediate effect. Review the decision and amend it if needed to do so. Sometimes information change and with change comes a responsibility to alter the decision, hence decision needs to be updated (Swinton, 2007).

Can you elucidate the events to your parents? To a random person you meet? On national television? In any case otherwise, revisit your decision before implementing it (Swinton, 2007).

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Here is one instance how business ethics come into play. KDCP is basically a company which deals in prepping students to excel the SAT exams (CB-Karen Dillard). The students had an excellent session learning the exam questions apart from tips, tricks and pointers about SAT exams. But on the inside, KDCP had stolen those SAT exam papers and employed them for their students.

It's not clear as to how many questions students prepared appeared in the exams as well, but some actually did (CB-Karen Dillard). College Board and SAT's parent company took KDCP in court. The lawsuit was filed in category of copyright infringement, but the real case was about the penalty to pay. College Board had a concrete case at their hands (CB-Karen Dillard). As KDCP saw its bleak future, it decided to settle with the College Board with an amount of $400,000 worth of free SAT preparatory classes for students from high school who were underprivileged to pay up the tuition fees (CB-Karen Dillard).

Poring over this case may bring several questions in mind. For those who can study in this preparatory session for free is good news. They can study and prep for SAT exams free of cost (CB-Karen Dillard). But, what about the paying students? What will they think? Their parents worked hard to pool funds and enroll them in SAT classes while they study for free? Some may think it increases the competition a few notches (CB-Karen Dillard).

Some of the enrolled ones probably pooled the funds themselves by working lowly paid jobs. They must have flipped burgers and served popcorn in cinema to pay up (CB-Karen Dillard). Keeping this frustration and angst in mind, can one design a utilitarian case against free SAT classes? From a utilitarian point-of-view, the College Board could have not revealed the information publicly to avoid displeasure of the paying students? (CB-Karen Dillard). After the news was leaked, could College Board spring damage control and cancel the free SAT classes whilst keeping them intact?

There were discussions about cancelling the papers of students who had inside help of SAT exams from KDCP classes which have exam booklets. Parents and students maintained that they remained in the dark the whole time and had paid for the test preparation only (CB-Karen Dillard). They were unaware of the fact that, they were preparing from actual exam papers. Hence, from a rule utilitarianism, how strong is their case of cancellation? From point-of-view of act utilitarianism, how strong is the case of scores retention (CB-Karen Dillard)?

The earning of College Board CEO is $830,000 annually. How does he reduce his income in a utilitarian case? In case, one was a utilitarian then how would one steal his earnings given the chance (CB-Karen Dillard)? Why not or why? The salary could be a part of a settlement to teach in classes for the underprivileged community and brushing up their self-respect and image by being socially responsible (CB-Karen Dillard). Make a case of both this being an egocentric company and an altruistic company. Were matters handled keeping ethics in mind? Was there room for improvement?

Many newly published reports talk about the occurrence of fraud in the business domain and gives contradictory evidence on if amount of misconducts are increasing or decreasing at firms (Verschoor, 2014). The amount of misconducts in case of United States of American might be lessening but it is growing worldwide. 2014 Global Economic Crime Survey (GECS), "Economic Crime: A Threat to Business Globally, is published by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is one such report which highlights elevating unethical behavior. According to the report, economic crime remains a worldwide concern for firms of all sizes in each region and in nearly each sector of industry. 37% of the firms are affected by economic crime (Verschoor, 2014). The rate of frauds rose from 30% to 34% from 2009 to 2011 and peaked 37% in 2014. As per the survey, the most commonly kinds of frauds reported are:

Bribery and corruption (27%)

Accounting fraud (22%)

Procurement fraud (29%)

Cybercrime (24%)

Asset misappropriation (69%)

These economic crimes are mostly from:

Africa 50%

North America 41%

Middle East 21%

As per PwC's Steven Skalak, "the negative outcome of economic crime is flawed business processes, declining employee integrity and lastly staining reputation (Verschoor, 2014)."

In the end, it's the innovation age, the rise of growth markets and an economy centric world. With new technologies,.....

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