Business Ethics: Dealing With Ethical Issues And Dilemmas In The Workplace

What are Ethical Issues?

Business ethics involves all moral principles that guide how businesses should behave. The same moral principles apply to individuals and determine their actions to business. Acting ethically implies differentiating between wrong and right and later making the right decision. Ideally, an unethical business practice can easily be identified. For instance, the company must not exploit workers or use child labor. They also not use unlawful processes or copyrighted materials. Consequently, the precise moral compass does not exist that could help leaders through difficult decisions about what is wrong or right. However, ethics within the workplace prepare staff and leaders on how they ought to behave. Most importantly, attention to ethics within the workstations assists ensure that when managers and leaders struggle in times of confusion and crises, they need to retain a resilient moral compass.

An ethical issue occurs where there is a conflict of wrong (unethical) or right (moral).It is also a situation that forces alternatives on a particular entity while seeking ethical behavior. Businesses must encounter these ethical issues regardless of their sizes. Therefore, companies must come up with ethics and codes of conduct that individuals should abide by and practice within an organization. Fundamental ethical issues include endorsing behavior built on integrity as well trust(Bowie, 2017). However, more complicated problems include empathetic decision making, accommodating diversity, governance consistent and compliance with a corporation’s core values.

Creation of job opportunities in Iceland is an ethical issue. Josh realizes that the country is very poor and by relocating some of the business, he is going to secure jobs for many people. As a result, the increase of the employment in Iceland will decrease poverty thus improving their living standards. Regardless of him paying the workers low wages, at the same time is going to help the society improve their living. Josh is honest, and besides, he loves Iceland. He has the desire to help youths in Iceland by creating job opportunities. In fact, Josh is socially responsible since he is determined towards assisting Iceland society. Regardless of them receiving low wages, Josh is going to earn credits for creating employment to the young people, by moving the distribution center in Iceland. He was indeed honest with himself, and he is already yearning to help others. Josh is a responsible man and being ethical as a manager of the company (Kaynak et al., 2015). Creating employment in Iceland is the primary ethical issue in this scenario and can be considered as the best decision in the society.

Identifying the Ethical Issue in the Given Scenario

Josh’s employment practices are unethical: In the given case, Josh’s employment practices are unethical. To avoid paying higher wages, Josh plan to structure the packaging & distribution unit in Iceland to cut expenses of the company is a non-ethical issue. His decision of employing individuals at low wages is against business ethics. He does not comply with the codes of the business regardless of him being the employer. First, he does not recognize that irrespective of the location all people are the same. He is practicing unfairness about salaries. Wanting people to work part-time and not full time will help him cuts costs but will also inconvenience some people (Braswell et al., 2107). Besides, the workers in Iceland are paid differently from others working in other countries. This indeed an unethical as these people will use the same energy same hours to carry out a similar task. Trying to take advantage of others for the same of the company is unacceptable in the society (Carroll et al., 2104). Everyone needs fair treatment thus enabling competence in the business. On the other hand, paying employees’ low wages does not give them satisfaction. One of the key determinants of dissatisfaction or satisfaction with reimbursement is how workers feel their compensation package compares to the rest. If a person realizes he or she does similar work as another, who is waged higher, will lead to bitterness and eventually to detachment. He fails to understand that better payment will motivate the employees and increase production. However, unfairness regarding payments is also unethical behavior and can lead to penalty or closure of the business. The decision that Josh did was unethical. Taking advantage of Iceland people through job creation at the same time paying them poorly is a way of exploitation. In fact, ethical decision making should focus on protecting customers and employees’ rights. In this scenario, Josh ought to make sure that all business processes are just and fair. He should have sheltered the common good while ensuring individual beliefs and values of workers are secured (Ferrell et al., 2015). In fact, leaders at firms who go against the laws by engaging in unethical practices that affect the society could face criminal charges.

An ethical dilemma arises whereby an individual has difficulty in decision making between two conceivable moral imperatives, and none of them is unambiguously preferable or acceptable. The complexity appears whereby there is a situational conflict and by obeying one side it would result in disobeying another (Hrenyk et al., 2016).In Josh case, the dilemma arises whereby Iceland people are complaining about improper payment. At first, Josh decided to relocate some businesses to that country as a way of creating jobs by good faith. At the same time, people are complaining of poor wages, yet he feels it was a way of helping them. Josh faces the ethical dilemma whereby he doesn’t know whether to increase the salaries or to relocate the businesses once more. He also knows that increasing the costs for unskilled labor will significantly affect the company financially. On the other hand, he knows that if people protest against low wages, the company may be forced to pay more than expected (Greenwood et al., 2018). However, Josh thinks that it’s not fair that other countries the salaries are lower than Iceland. The leader is still in the dilemma since he does not know whether to increase the wages on not. Ideally, adding the payments will have gone against Josh will and relocation will have been meaningless.

Non-Ethical Issue in the Given Scenario

Moral universalism and relativism are forms of meta-ethical views. The two theories try to explain the motive behind ethical attitudes, properties, judgments, and boundaries. Moral universalism is perceived as an ideal world. On the other hand, Moral relativism gives individuals a realistic view of why various cultures can interpret similar actions differently. Relativism concept explains that all opinions are equally useful. The viewpoints are relative, and no one should impose theirs on others. The main point is that people need to respect the views of others without coercing them. Universalism, on the other hand, is a meta-ethical concept and morality that applies to everyone ( Li et., 2018). The morality and ethics apply universally regardless of peoples’ race, culture, sex, nationality, religion, sexuality, and other distinguishing issues.

In this scenario, there is both moral universalism and moral relativism. Moral relativism appears where Josh felt it’s good to relocate the distributor center to Iceland as a way of creating jobs in the country and paying them low wages. He views it as a good idea that would help the nation rise through job creation. On the other hand, creating jobs and paying low wages is perceived as the wrong thing by everyone since it’s a way of exploiting people which is moral universalism (Shaw et al., 2015). Every culture will indeed view the idea of creating jobs and paying low wages as wrong as individuals will also be incompetent.

An individual should not be deceived deliberately, and in fact, no one has the right to do so. Besides, has no right to be enforced to violate his conscience. An individual has the right to expect other people to live up to their pledges and act in abidance to the law. Similarly, an employer in the workstation should expect the workers to comply with the corporation’s policy, and that is his right.

References

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

Carroll, A., &Buchholtz, A. (2014). Business and Society: Ethics, sustainability, and stakeholder management. Nelson Education.

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

Greenwood, M., & Freeman, R. E. (2018).Deepening Ethical Analysis in Business Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-4.

Hrenyk, J., Szymanski, M., Kar, A., & Fitzsimmons, S. R. (2016). Understanding Multicultural Individuals as Ethical Global Leaders.In Advances in Global Leadership (pp. 57-78). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Kaynak, R., Sert, T., Sert, G., &Akyuz, B. (2015). Supply chain unethical behaviors and continuity of relationship: Using the PLS approach for testing moderation effects of inter-organizational justice. International Journal of Production Economics, 162, 83-91.

Li, F., Chao, M. C. H., Chen, N. Y. F., & Zhang, S. (2018). Moral judgment in a business setting: The role of managers’ moral foundation, ideology, and level of moral development. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 35(1), 121-143.

Shaw, W. H. (2016). Business ethics: A textbook with cases. Nelson Education.

Shaw, W. H., & Barry, V. (2015). Moral issues in business.Cengage Learning.

Braswell, M. C., McCarthy, B. R., & McCarthy, B. J. (2017). Justice, crime, and ethics.Taylor & Francis.