Essay: Ethics And Responsibility In Business." (50 Characters)

Sample Standard Answer

There will be no pacific right or wrong answers in most of the cases. You have to provide justification of your answer. The quality of the answer will depend on your logic and reference to related concept/theories.

Few examples are given below.

Question

Do rights and responsibilities go hand-in-hand? If a non-human entity can enjoy certain rights, does it naturally follow that it also has responsibilities?

Answer

Most would agree that rights and responsibilities are connected. Students may have opposing views in regard to an organisation’s responsibilities – some will argue for the broad view and others for the narrow.  Students have to apply theory to defend opposing positions. Students should be discussing issues relating to the ethical standards and responsibilities of organisations.

Question

Who should bear the responsibility for product safety? Why?

Answer

Students will have different views. They have to defend their views. The arguments that are pertinent to this question start from the section ‘Who bears responsibility for safety?’ The sections on product safety and the regulatory framework are also relevant.

Question

Discuss whether legislation would be more effective than self-regulation in regard to product safety. What are some of the likely consequences of putting an unsafe product on the market?

Answer

Students will have different views. The section on regulatory framework contains information that is relevant to this question. Consequences of putting an unsafe product on the market could include injuries, deaths, negative or poor publicity, damage to the company’s reputation, decreased sales and possible litigation (compensation cases). Include real-life example

Your revision should incorporate a comprehensive revision of the entire course through the:

• lecture notes
• Case studies within the Class
• self-study questions
• textbook readings

Moral manager can be rightfully defined as a manager who is involved in the engagement of the moral behavior and stands as an ethical example in front of the different employees of an organization. The moral manager can be stated to be the excellent prototype for moral leadership and states that the best way in which the ethical business can be built is by the knowledge sharing process which comes from the moral manager. According to Archie, Jill and Ann (2018), the managers are practical and have started to deal with ethical as well as social concerns to manage the different business functions as present. These managers have been able to deal with the unmanageable concerns and have been able to ensure that the balance is remained. Bowie (2017), states that moral management as portrayed by the different managers can be stated to be the first example of an ethical behavior which guides the different members of the firm.  The ethical behavior can be stated to be the manner in which the different members of the society think about values. The moral managers reflect ethical behavior which helps in promoting principles like fairness, equality, diversity and dignity.

Answer to Question 2

The Ethics principle can be rightfully stated to be those principles which go a long way in assisting the different individuals and businesses to take certain decisions based on this they will easily able to decide upon their actions. The two basic ethics principles which will be discussed are the principles of consequentialism and duty. According to Crane and Matten (2016), consequentialism can be stated to be the normative theory of ethics which states that not the actions but the consequences of the actions need to be examined for any judgement and that a morally correct action can be considered to be correct if it reflects a good outcome. The second principle of ethics is based on duty. This is often known as deontological ethics and according to Creyer (1997), this ethical principle is rather contrary to the former one whereby the basis of judgement of an action is decided on the basis of the morality of an action which prove it right or wrong under rules rather than on the basis of their consequences.

According to Trevino and Nelson (2016), consumer surveillance can be stated to be the monitoring and recording of the activities of the different people`s activities as well as the data either when the purchase or shop physically or conduct their shopping online. This consumer surveillance can be considered to be a common aspect with respect to the advertising and the marketing whereby the data of the customers is often shared with the third parties. This activity tends to use the different information on the consumer like the age, gender, location, level of education and others and is then aligned with the activities they conduct online. The physical location of the different users are also tracked and the third parties design the products based on the same. Many people often view this perspective as a violation of the ethical as well as the privacy principles whereby the different customers who are being targeted often feel that this surveillance is an unethical principle which is eyeing their activities (Velasquez & Velazquez, 2002). Moreover, although they are treated as objects, this process is unfair and can be passed as general spying by the different members of the public and may be misused in order to harm these individuals and is considered to be against the ethics of technology.

Answer to Question 1

The product is considered to be a critical part of an organization and with respect to this the organization needs to ensure that they are required to take the essential duty and responsibility of ensuring that the safety of the products is maintained accordingly.  Hence, it can be considered to be the responsibility of the business to ensure that the product is safe for the consumption of the different consumers and that they warrant the product. However, due to profitability of the businesses, the organizations often limit the safety considerations of the product with consideration to the cost of the product. If the margin of the safety needs to be increased, they often consider it twice due to the budgetary considerations. However, the business needs to ensure that as a seller it owes certain consumer rights to the different consumers which holds them responsible for not ensuring the safety of the different products (Solomon, 1992).

As a business owner, the seller holds the ethical responsibility of providing clear and accurate information regarding the use of the product and their packaging so that the products are not misleading or may be used in the wrong manner. Hence, product safety as per the Consumer rights is the responsibility of the seller.

As an employer, there are several duties and obligations which they hold and under the law, the employers are responsible for the health as well as the safety of the employees. There are certain broad guidelines present which applies to the employers in regard to the health and safety of the employees. According to Stark (1993), it thereby lies the duty of the employer to ensure that it looks out to improve the overall health of all employees associated with the business. This measure can be ensured by seeing to it that the employees are largely protected from any component which may cause harm to them and to effectively control any risk which might provide them with injury and other safety concerns. Hence, as a measure, as stated by Solomon (1992),  it lies the duty of the employers to undertake continuous risk assessment in order to ensure that such a scenario does not arise and often undertake consultation to ensure the same. Various laws like the Health and Safety Information for Employees Regulations (HSIER) suggest the employers to provide sufficient instructions to the employees in every activity to ensure safety.

According to Rossouw and Van Vuuren (2017), ethical relativism can be described as a theory which states that morality may be considered to be relative with respect to the norm of culture. This means that an action can be considered to be right or wrong one depending on the moral norms which are followed in the particular society where the culture is practiced at large. This same practice may be considered to be correct in one culture ad can be considered to be unethical in another society. With respect to the ethical relativism there does not exist a particular action which may be considered to be morally right or wrong. However, many critics do not believe that the particular ethical relativism theory can be considered to be right or wrong.  According to many ethicists, this theory needs to be rejected as the fundamental principles of the different societies are taken to be one. For instance, killing one`s parents after a certain age is moral because afterlife is good for them. However, such a practice would be considered to be unethical in the other societies as they have a duty to look after the parents. Other philosophers must also believe that it is not correct because of the individual moral beliefs (Post et al., 2002).  The different philosophers are often under the belief that although it is incorrect but the values and morals of the different societies need to be respected as it is influenced by the culture and before an examination into the same, it should be the duty of the philosopher to examine the same.

Question 2

Corporate governance forms an essential part of the organization and with respect to this it lies the duty of the company to take considerable measures to ensure that they are able to improve on their corporate governance for a long period of time. The different measures which may be adopted by them are given as follows:

1. Ensuring that the good governance not only comes from the compliance and regulations but from the engagement of the employees in the different actions.
2. The board also needs to have an active role in the formation of the strategy which will help in ensuring long term success.
3. The performance of the organization needs to be monitored regularly and any problems being faced need to be solved (Pearson, 2017).
4. Ensuring that the different directors have the adequate information which would assist them to take adequate decisions.
5. Additionally, the organization needs to ensure that they are able to build an effective governance infrastructure which will help them to achieve their overall goals.

The environmental degradation can be stated to be the disintegration or the deterioration of the environment through the business consumption of various harmful assets by the business. The different causes are as follows:

1. Land disturbance: The losing out of the greenery due to the formation of various factories and other such other development aspects have led to land disturbance.
2. Pollution: The different factories often emit smoke which can be considered to be harmful for the firm.
3. Deforestation: Deforestation may be caused by cutting of the trees to fulfill the requirements of the business (Nyssens, Le Polain & Perilleux, 2014).

The solution to resolve this is by following sustainability. Sustainability can be stated to be a practice which will help the business in ensuring that the business not only aims to fulfill the needs of the present but ensures that the requirements of the future generation is also fulfilled. With respect to this, it can be stated that if the firm follows sustainable practices it will be able to resolve the environmental degradation caused by it.

Very often the different companies do not seem to take the employee welfare as a consideration of moral concern and are ultimately concerned about the profits which they would undertake. As the competition in the business segment has been increasingly considerably, it also becomes important for the different business organizations to ensure that they are able to combat against pricing wars (Mill, 2016). The Rana Plaza case is a typical example of the manner in which the giant organizations often in consideration of the outsourcing of the work to the cheaper companies tend to exploit the cheap labor and do not set and considerable measures which will then assist in ensuring that the different business enterprises and the employees would remain safe at large. However, it needs to be a concern of the multinationals to be able to ensure that they are successfully able to look after and set various standards which will assist them in forming safety measures for the different employees (Goodpaster, 1991). Hence, outsourcing to the cheap labor countries can be only considered to be a good measure only if the corporations take responsible attempts. After the Rana Plaza, various countries have set out certain measures which would assist them in ensuring that the employees stay safe. This attempt has been continuing to take place which can be considered to be genuine in nature and also helps to improve the overall image of the firm.

Answer to Question 10

The given case study on Nestle highlighted the fact that as the environmental considerations have increased considerably, the various NGOs and other firms like Green Peace have taken considerable measures in order to ensure that even they are taking adequate marketing steps to change the decisions of the different consumers at large. Hence, although it may not be the fault of a particular company, it needs to be ensured it lies the duties of the different companies who make of the perishable resources to consider the overall welfare of the firm at large (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015).  If this is not considered to be a serious matter it may ending up spoiling the overall disruption that exists in a business environment. In the case of KitKat, although the company contributes least to the environmental degradation it can be stated that this company can had been targeted by the Greenpeace (Donaldson, 1989).  Hence, in order to improve the particular issue that exists, the different businesses need to ensure that instead of taking the legal route they are successfully able to instead amend their ways and react quickly to improve the overall scenario. Social media can be used as a channel to improve the image of the firm and in addition to this the companies also need to take up considerable measures which would assist towards the overall environmental conservation.

References

Archie B. C, Jill A. B & Ann K. B, (2018). Business & Society: Ethics, Sustainability 
& Stakeholder Management ISBN 9781305959828 Edition 10, Cengage Learning 
Australia Pty Ltd

Bowie, N. E. (2017). Business ethics: A Kantian perspective. Cambridge University Press.

Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2016). Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.

Creyer, E. H. (1997). The influence of firm behavior on purchase intention: do consumers really care about business ethics?. Journal of consumer Marketing, 14(6), 421-432.

Donaldson, T. (1989). The ethics of international business.

Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. (2015). Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Nelson Education.

Goodpaster, K. E. (1991). Business ethics and stakeholder analysis. Business ethics quarterly, 53-73.

Mill, J. S. (2016). Utilitarianism. In Seven Masterpieces of Philosophy (pp. 337-383). Routledge.

Nyssens, M., Le Polain, M., & Perilleux, A. (2014). The relevance of the common goods approach to examine social enterprise-Insights from Ostrom to the SE field. In The Fourth IAP-Day-From common goods to social banking: sharing theories and field analyses.

Pearson, R. (2017). Business ethics as communication ethics: Public relations practice and the idea of dialogue. In Public relations theory (pp. 111-131). Routledge.

Post, J. E., Lawrence, A. T., Weber, J., & SJ, J. W. (2002). Business and society: Corporate strategy, public policy, ethics. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Rossouw, D., & Van Vuuren, L. (2017). Business ethics. Oxford University Press.

Solomon, R. C. (1992). Ethics and excellence: Cooperation and integrity in business.

Stark, A. (1993). What's the matter with business ethics?. Harvard business review, 71(3), 38-40.

Trevino, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2016). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right. John Wiley & Sons.

Velasquez, M. G., & Velazquez, M. (2002). Business ethics: Concepts and cases (Vol. 111). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.