Submitted by: Erika M. Lorenzo
Managing Business Ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right (2nd edition)
HF 5387T73
Chapter 3: Common Ethical Problems
In this chapter, it highlighted some of the most common ethical problems an individual can encounter during her stay in a particular job and career. In this chapter, it has divided the common ethical problems into different categories including human resources issues, conflicts of interest, customer confidence issues, and the use of corporate resources.
Discrimination is an ethical issue because it’s at the core of fairness in the workplace. “Our government has attempted to ensure that fairness and justice; the word “trust” is on every piece of currency, and the pledge of allegiance declares “with liberty and justice for all.” People should learn how to value diversity and learn to appreciate differences from the different colors, religions, accents, races, and many more. Valuing diversity means treating people equally while appreciating differences.
Conflict of interest occurs when your judgment or objectivity is compromised. An example of ethical problem under Conflicts of interest is bribery. These bribes can be interpreted to include gifts and entertainment. Another one is confidentiality under customer confidence issues. Customer confidence issues include a range of topics including confidentiality. Confidentiality is an ethical issue because they revolve around fairness, honesty, and respect for other people. And the last one is the using of corporate resources. This is an ethical issue because it involves being unfair and dishonesty.
Chapter 4: Deciding What’s Right: A Prescriptive Approach
“We know, however, that people don’t always make the best decision.” In chapter two, deciding what’s right through a prescriptive approach, is an approach that includes decision making tools for a person to derive his answers or moral choices. According to this book, there are eight steps to sound ethical decision making in business. The 1st one is to gather facts. Fact gathering is often easier said than done. We don’t have to jump into solutions or decisions without knowing what the facts are.
The 2nd step is defining the ethical issues. We have to determine what are those things that can be considered as ethical issues in nature. It’s a good thing that almost all colleges offered a subject called ethics. This course could help us distinguish what are ethical issues and what are not. The third step is to identify the affected parties. “Being able to see the situation through others’ eyes is a key moral reasoning skill.” You have to think beyond the facts in order to identify all affected parties. The 4th step is to identify the consequences. By identifying what consequences of your actions are, you may able to determine who in the affected parties will get harm. The 5th step is to identify the obligations. This step varies depending on the actors involved. If for example you are an accountant to a particular firm. Your obligations involves being honest at all times. The 6th step is to consider your character and integrity. This step can be especially valuable when decision needs to be made quickly. The 7th step is to think creatively about potential actions. Before making any decision, be sure that you have not forced yourself to that that actions. You have to think about what your actions would be so that you’ll have no regrets in the end. And the last one is checking your guts. Empathy is an important emotion that can signal awareness that someone might be harmed. You always have to consult your guts and your rational thinking.
Chapter 8: Ethical Problems of Organization
In this chapter, it presented itself a numerous number of ethical business cases within the framework concerning the organization. Many of the cases here speak about business disasters. In these cases, many of them started as small unmanaged issues that later on evolved into something major that involves ethical issues.
Inside an organization there are different types of people catered. These people are called stakeholders. This book categorized these stakeholders into 4 parts. The customers, shareholders, employees, and the community.
From these different categories of stakeholders lie many different real life experience cases including the Johnson & Johnson. A great lesson here is that the point of examining these cases is for managers to learn from the mistakes of the others. He should not commit into something that has already happened before.