Paper Example: Ethical Responsibilities of Organization

This week’s topic, the ethical responsibilities of an organization, is about what is morally acceptable and expected of all organizations. The activities of a company affect customers, investors, shareholders, suppliers, etc. Because of these, a manager and the shareholders ought to make decisions that are ethically right to show the organization’s social responsibility (Ferrell, 2004). The cynical might argue that the sole purpose of any business organization is to make a profit; this is advocated by the economist Friedman who wrote in the 1970s that making profits was the only social responsibility of any business. He claimed that since organizations are not humans, they cannot have ethical responsibilities. In today’s market, customers and investors want to associate themselves with companies they feel good about from their products or services; this implies that, despite profits being the bottom line, organizations should also strive to be ethically responsible.

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Ethical Responsibility to Employees: an organization should establish policies and apply those policies in a manner that is fair and just to all employees (Caldwell & Anderson, 2018). Favoring other employees, or giving them advantages over others is morally wrong. For an ethically responsible corporation, a balance should be found between profit-based and morality-based employment decisions.

Ethical Responsibilities to Customers: An organization ought to satisfy consumers’ rights to a degree of high standards. The management should come up with strategies of how to make products better, how to offer better customer services, and how to provide those goods and services at a reasonable price.

Ethical Responsibility to the supply chain: the relationship that exists between the organization and the retailers, distributors, and suppliers should be kept professional, honest, and full of integrity. The organization has an ethical responsibility to be accurate in all transactions. The prices involved should also be fair.

Ethical Responsibility to the Environment: the company also has a social responsibility to the environment. Since the decisions made by the company have an impact on the environment like the disposal of waste, the decisions should remain ethically right. The organization should work to take care of the environment. Such is basically what this week’s topic is comprised of.

References

Caldwell, C., & Anderson, V. (2018). Ethical Responsibilities of Human Resource Management: A Framework for Moral Conduct. Strategic Human Resource Management (C. Caldwell & V. Anderson, eds.), New York: Nova Publishing.

Ferrell, O.C. (2004). Business ethics and customer stakeholders. Academy of Management Perspectives, 18(2), 126-129. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.2004.13836176