please read and answer questions: What did you think about while participating in the journal on Ethics as it pertains to your current workforce or personal experience?What attitudes have you gained from participating in the journal on Ethics?What did you know before and what did you learn in the journal on Ethics?Why is Ethics important and how does it impact the workforce and/or community as a whole?What did you learn in the journal that you won't forget tomorrow on Ethics? Essentials of Management - ETHICSCourtesy of Various Wall Street JournalsSource by: Alan Murray, Deputy Managing EditorThe first decade of the twenty-first century has taken a horrendous toll on the reputationof business: the stunning collapse of Enron Corporation, the collapse of respected accountingfirm Arthur Anderson, WorldCom, which improperly booked billions of dollars of expenses;Adelphia Communications Corporation founder charged with what the Securities and ExchangeCommission identified as the most extensive financial frauds to take place at a public company,and Tyco's CFO charged with looting hundreds of millions of dollars from their firm. And yet thereare so many others in more recent time, Maddox, Martha Stewart to name a few. The accountingscandals were followed by a steady stream of stories about excessive CEO pay practices, PfizerInc., Home Depot, and Sears and Kmart. The crowning blow to the public's view of businesscame with the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. By the end of the decade, "business ethics" wasseen by most of the public as a contradiction in terms.WHAT IS BUSINESS ETHICS?Peter Drucker argued that there is no such thing as "business ethics." The very phrasesuggested those in business should live by different rules than everyone else lives by. Considera simple example: a waiter at a popular restaurant offers free dessert to a table of customers whoare upset about having to wait so long for their food. In return, the customers pay the waiter a bigtip. Is that laudable conduct on the part of the waiter, who has turned unsatisfied customers intohappy ones, and been rewarded for his success? Or has the waiter stolen from his employer, bytrading off a smaller dinner check for a bigger tip?For managers, the difficulties of distinguishing your interests from those of yourorganization become greater. You likely have authority to spend the organization's resources;but you have to make decisions about which expenditures are legitimate, and which aren't.Traveling to meet with a critical customer can clearly be in the interests of the organizations. Butwhat if the customer is in Paris, and you organize the visit for a Friday that coincides with aweekend when your friend is traveling to Paris as well? Are you acting in the organization'sinterests? Or your own?COMPANY POLICYThe extravagant mixing of business and pleasure by CEOs at company expense was anastonishing common practice. Companies often defend such practices by saying they areconsistent with the wishes of their boards of directors, which in turn are supposed to be lookingafter the interests of shareholders, who ultimately own the company. Corporate governanceexperts question whether boards filled with people who may have been suggested for the job bythe CEO, and who can earn $100,000 to $200,000 a year in directors' fees, are in a position toadequately oversee use of the shareholders' resources.The importance of doing good even as you are doing wellPage 1 of 4 Essentials of Management - ETHICSCourtesy of Various Wall Street JournalsSource by: Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor2006 unveiled another popular corporate tactic used to line the pockets of companyexecutives - options backdating. Scouring corporate records found a large number of companiesthat seemed to have an uncanny ability to issue new stock options to executives when thecompany's stock was at a trough, ensuring big gains when the stock rose. The only plausibleexplanation was that the option issue date was set after the fact, once it became clear the stockwas going to rise. Back-daters caught up more than 130 companies and led to the firing orresignation of more than fifty executives and directors.As a manager, you need to be constantly thinking, not about what you can get away with,but about what is right. And you need to be wary of complex schemes that lead to questionableoutcomes. An important role of the manager is to lead by example. If you are fastidious aboutdistinguishing between what rightfully belongs to the organization as opposed to you; if you don'tpile on expenses that seem to benefit you more than the organization: if you don't take advantageof easy opportunities to overcharge a customer or underpay a supplier; if you don't allow anyoneto play games with performance or financial metrics; then there's a much better chance thatothers will follow in your footsteps. Do the opposite, and you may soon find yourself the victim ofethical lapses by others.CREATING AN ETHICAL CULTUREDoes ethics pay? It's simply misleading to assume that ethical values and financialimperatives will naturally coincide. There are too many cases in which unethical behavior haspaid off in the short term and the long term.As a result, ethics has to be instituted as a separate discipline in corporations, distinctfrom the financial discipline. Managers have to take it as a central part of their job to make suretheir organization is behaving in a moral fashion. How do you do that? Setting the right exampleis critical. But beyond that, asking the right questions imposes a useful discipline. All keydecisions or actions should be subjected to a series of questions organized around the alternatefour Ps: Purpose, principle, people, and power.0 Purpose - Does this decision or action serve a worthwhile purpose? Do our goals herecontribute to people's lives? Do we have a sound bas for pursuing the proposed path?Principle - Is this action consistent with relevant principles? What norms of conduct arerelevant to this situation? Are there any relevant ethical principles that need to beconsidered? Are we violating any of our ideals, aspirations, laws, or company codes ofconduct in doing this?People - Does this action respect the legitimate claims of the people likely to beaffected? Who is likely to be affected, both directly and indirectly, from the action? Whowill benefit form it? Who will be injured? Will anyone's rights be violated or infringed inany way?0The importance of doing good even as you are doing wellEssentials of Management - ETHICSCourtesy of Various Wall Street JournalsSource by: Alan Murray, Deputy Managing EditorPage 2 of 4Power - Do we have the power to take this action? What is the scope of our legitimateauthority in view of relevant laws, agreements, understanding, and stakeholderexpectations? Have we secured the necessary approvals or consent?By instilling a discipline of asking these sorts of questions as part of your organization's decision-making process, you can help ensure you are considering the moral consequences of youractions.CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITYThe basics of organizational ethics are fairly simple: Don't lie. Don't cheat. Don't steal.And obey the laws and regulations society imposes on you.In recent decades, there have been ever-rising demands on corporations to go furtherand engage in activities for the general benefit of society. The pressure started in the 1970s,when a group of religious and other nonprofits began pressuring companies to stop investing inSouth Africa, because of its apartheid policies, and when the American Jewish Congressintroduced shareholder actions against companies it suspected of supporting the Arab boycott ofIsrael. In subsequent decades, environmental groups took the lead, pressuring companies tostop mining or drilling or logging ventures that they felt spoiled the environment.Today corporate responsibility has become a full-fledged movement. In theory, thatmeans companies measure their activities not only for their effect on profit but also for their effecton people and the planet. The company's goal is no longer to simply benefit shareholders, butalso to benefit "stakeholders," with stakeholders defined so broadly as to include anyone whoselife may be affected by the company's action.Economist Milton Friedman, Adam Smith "the invisible hand", and former British LaborPrime Minister Tony Blair each weighed in on CSR. Friedman argued vociferously that the socialresponsibility of business is to make a profit; Smiths' belief is to ensure that profit seeking addsup to broad social benefit; and Blair echoed that the first responsibility of business is to run agood business.But as Drucker points out, the modern corporation can't really escape the fact that it hasmany responsibilities to society. First, and foremost, it must take responsibility for its own impacton society. If it is polluting the air or the water, if it is harming employees or people who livenearby, if it's creating unsafe products, or if it's otherwise doing things that infringe on the rights ofpeople, it needs to be held accountable.No organization can afford to fully ignore the environment in which it operates. If thepublic educational system is deteriorating, corporations have a responsibility to address theproblem, in part because their long-term business viability depends on it.

Note: “Only the second and fourth part has been answered in a generalized manner as the rest of the…

Answered: please read and answer questions:…

Understanding Business

12th Edition

ISBN:9781259929434

Author:William Nickels

Publisher:William Nickels

Chapter1: Taking Risks And Making Profits Within The Dynamic Business Environment

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 1CE

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