Position Paper

Position Paper

Introduction

Real organizational ethics is a rational process for exploring all possible behavior alternatives and selecting the best possible choices for all involved. Real ethics, at the organizational level, goes beyond personal ethics and values. Real ethics is a collective undertaking, or a team sport, with team like demands and results. Ethical issues in organizations can get complicated very quickly, so much that even the best trained ethicists often will not know what decisions to make or what ought to be done.

Such times are precisely when the disciplined reasoning of ethics quality pays off the most. Ethical decisions and their corresponding behaviors in organizational settings are never perfect. However, the quality of the processes applied, as well as the usefulness of their outcomes, is precise and measurable with scientific certainty. It is through the process of ethical reasoning that bad things are preventable and great things become more possible. (Johnson 2002, Exploring Corporate Strategy)

Organizations need ethics quality not only to prevent unhealthy behavior but to inspire superior reasoning and performance. It is only through human nature, and ethics, that we can inspire greater levels of innovation, teamwork, and process breakthroughs that result in sustainable competitive advantages.

When managers understand how ethics makes them better, their role as a manager changes forever. Once ethics is learned we all acquire the ability to see what we often could not see before. We see that using ethics - the reasoning science - to improve individual and group performance is what real ethics -and real management- are all about. (Senser 1995, Looking at the Top)

Organizations must consider the issue of social responsibility. At what point does the responsibility of the firm's owners and stockholders balance with the rights of society as a whole? How can we as students of management identify the social responsibilities of organizations? Finally, how can managers assure themselves that organizational representatives are exercising social and ethical responsibility in their actions.

Some would argue that the sole responsibility of an organization is to its stockholders. Others would argue that there are several specific constituencies to which an organization is responsible. These several groups may have conflicting desires, and the rights of each must be balanced against those of the others. (Hearit, 2003)

Primary stakeholders are those who are directly impacted by the actions of the organization, such as stockholders, employees, customers, etc. Secondary stakeholders are those who are affected by the actions of the corporation, but only as a by-product of the intended results, such as neighbors, the community as a whole and those who have ecological concerns about the effect an organization has on its environment. A third argument would suggest that an organization's responsibility is to society as a whole. These three approaches to social responsibility each imply different approaches to the activities of the firm. (Grumet 1992, Critique of Ethics Laws)

Legal Issues

Business plans optimize growth and development according to the plans and priorities set forth by management; therefore; guidelines for securing corporate monetary and legal security are applied during ...