Transcript Business Ethics

Business Ethics
What is Ethics?
 Ethics: A set of moral principles, especially ones
relating to or affirming a specified group, field, or form
of conduct; govern a persons or groups behavior.
 Business Ethics: Study and examination of moral social
responsibility in relation to business practices and
decision making in business.
Business Ethics Checklist
1) What are the facts?
2) Identify the critical issues.
3) Identify the stakeholders who will be affected by the
decision and describe why they would be affected.
4) Identify the alternatives
5) Discuss ethical implications of each alternative.
6) Come to a result and justify that result based upon the
results of this analysis.
What are the facts?
 Restate the key facts of the situation.
 Are there any other facts you want to investigate?
Identify the critical issues
 Why is this not an easy decision?
Identify stakeholders
 Stakeholders are people potentially affected by the
decision. This list might include subordinates, bosses,
shareholders, suppliers, customers, members of the
business in which the community operates, society as a
whole, or even more remote stakeholders, such as
future generations.
Identify the alternatives
 List at least two reasonable alternatives on how to
resolve the problem
Discuss the ethical implications of
each alternative
 Is the alternative legal?
 What are the consequences of this alternative?
 Does the alternative violate any of your own important
personal values?
 How would the alternatives look if they were displayed
on television?
Come to a result
 You must come to an answer and that answer needs to
be consistent with the steps you just performed.
Example
Joe Schmo works for ABC Co. He is scheduled to have
an hour lunch break off the clock everyday. Sometimes
Joe only clocks out for half an hour even though he
continues to take the full hour for his lunch. Sally Sue
notices that Joe is not being completely honest about
his lunch break and debates telling her boss. She is
worried that if she doesn’t speak up she will be
punished for knowing and not telling. She is also
worried that the company will be hurt if she doesn’t
come forward. If she does tell she is worried that she
will be reprimanded for being a tattle tale. What should
Sally do?
Example: What are the facts?
 Joe Schmo is being unethical about his lunch break.
 He is costing the company money for un-worked time.
 He is being dishonest.
 If Sally Sue doesn’t tell she too will be unethical.
Example: Identify the Critical
Issues
 Sally Sue does not want to be seen as a tattle tale.
Joe is being unethical
Bad press for company if not handled correctly
Example: Identify
Stakeholders
 ABC Company
 Employees
 Shareholders
 Customers
Example: Identify Alternatives
 Sally can continue to allow Joe to be dishonest about
his lunch break and not tell management
 Sally can tell upper management about Joe to resolve
the issue.
Example: Ethical Implications of
Not Telling Management
 Is the alternative legal? No, not telling is allowing Joe to
steal time and money from the company.
 What are the consequences of this alternative?
Stakeholders lose money, unethical for Sally not to tell,
situation in general is unethical
 Does the alternative violate any of your personal
values? Sally knows it’s not right. She doesn’t want the
company to be hurt.
 How would this look on TV? Bad press for the company if
it was released on TV. Sally would probably be the center of
the story for not telling.
Example: Ethical Implications of
telling management
 Is the alternative legal? Yes. Sally may just be nervous to
tell on somebody.
 What are the consequences of the situation? Joe would
probably be fired and Sally would be relieved that she did
the right thing. The company would be better off in the end
as well.
 Does this violate any personal values? No, Sally knows
that this is the right thing to do.
 How would this look on TV? Good press for the company.
It would show other employees that it is OK to be honest.
Example: Come to a result
 Sally needs to tell management because it benefits the
company in the long run and it is the correct ethical
decision to make.
Take care of your employees Video
 Taking care of your employees can be a huge
preventative factor when it comes to ethics!
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o6TEZyg9VY
How to prevent unethical issues
 In training introduce company’s ethics checklist
and emphasize the importance of it
 Test employees over the checklist
 Have frequent meetings with employees based on
ethics only
 Make ethics checklist public so people and
employees know how important ethics are to the
company. Doing so holds the company to a certain
standard. Distribute throughout the office so each
employee has his or her own copy.
How to prevent cont…
 Employ audit firms to perform frequent
audits so employees are aware they they
will get caught if they do something
unethical
 Outline an extensive section for production ethics in the
development stage of your checklist your plant
managers should check measures for worker safety,
production sustainability, and product testing before
proceeding with the project
How to deal with unethical
behavior
 Enforce company policy that explains zero tolerance for
unethical behavior in very specific areas.
 Termination
 Memo to remaining employees stressing again how
serious the company is about the code of ethics and
that there are consequences.
 Encourage employees to report unethical behavior.
Don’t be afraid to get someone in trouble.
Optional Ethics Video
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGviXZqpQjU
 Watch this video if you would like some additional
humorous information on business ethics.
References
 http://www.ehow.com/how_2103179_developbusiness-ethics-checklist.html
 www.dictionary.com
 www.anonymusemployee.com/csssite/sidelinks/unethic
al_behavior.php
 Prof. Jason Fichtner, Drake University
 www.youtube.com