Free Essay Example: Organizational Ethics and Social Responsibility

Organizations utilize their internal and external environment to ensure they bring social and economic development to society. Organizations perform these obligations through corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR gets defined differently by various institutions, but the definition created by the World Business Council of Sustainable Development gets adapted for academic purposes (Tai, & Chuang, 2014). World Business Council of Sustainable Development defines CSR as the lasting vow by organizations to participate in economic development and increase the quality of life of the employees, their people, the community, and the world.

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Paradigm Toys is a manufacturer and retailer of children’s toys whose primary stakeholders are the workforce and the customers. Primary stakeholders influence the success and failure of the business directly. Paradigm Toys meet the workforce's CSRs by creating an environment where employees work effectively and attain personal development (Tai, & Chuang, 2014). Occupational Safety and Health Association developed safe work conditions in which the organization treats its customers. The organization meets the CSRs of its customers by providing toys according to marketing messages. The services provided to the customers also show value and respect to humankind. The organization must create a corporate culture in which the workforce and customers' freedom to voice their demands is provided.

Secondary stakeholders for Paradigm Toys include the community and the media. Secondary stakeholders Influence how the world views Paradigm Toys, which affects sales and revenue. The company achieves the CSRs of secondary stakeholders by working with them to influence the company's success. Paradigm Toys uses the media as the platform to which it communicates to the customers and community through advertising and marketing platforms (Tai, & Chuang, 2014). The media get used to increase the company's sales, which largely reflects the company's success in a particular region. The community provides Paradigm Toys with factors of production, such as the land, raw materials, and labor. The company meets CSR for the community by addressing their interests through products and participating in environmental conservation activities to show the company values about their interests. The primary and secondary stakeholders are intertwined and influence each other. For instance, the company's customers would increase according to the efforts the company has put in media. Secondary stakeholders get considered as the most important because they influence the primary stakeholders directly.

Ethical Leadership

Ethical Culture

Ethical leadership gets considered the company's ability to apply moral values in its decisions and operations. A business gets judged by the community according to the standards it follows in conducting its business. A company that develops an ethical culture can conduct its operations in an ethical, respectable, and correct manner which influences employees' morale, improve organizational commitment, and increase employee participation in business development (Demirtas & Akdogan, 2015). Leaders get considered as the pioneers for organizational ethics through their actions in business. Paradigm Toys’ leadership may influence ethical culture by providing a framework to employees through clear boundaries for risks and ethical business standards. The employees should understand organizational values through character evaluation in hiring, retention, and promotion practices. Employees who acquire the requirements of the organization from the start can comply with organizational ethical rules. Frequent examination of the complaints raised by employees and the customers should get applied to reflect whether the organization's procedures are in line with its standards. In general, Paradigm Toys' leadership may foster ethical culture by leading by example through the creation of safe mechanisms for reporting and rewarding violation and integrity, respectively.

Ethics Audit

An ethics audit is the business process through which an organization creates its strengths and weaknesses in maintaining an ethical culture. An ethical audit is done through checklists and notes that determine a company's ethical score (Kelchner, 2017). The weaknesses show the areas within an organization that needs changes through policies. An ethics audit in Paradigm Toys can identify the department, location, or policies affected by the social climate in a particular region and suggest changes that need to be adapted. An ethics audit can help an organization connect to society by becoming more socially responsible. The company will set standards according to the morally acceptable values making it part of the general community. The organization's success gets determined by the organization's ability to connect to the people through its business activities and products.

Ethical Framework

Ethical Dilemma

Relationships between the customers and the employees are highly recommended in business environments. An employee serving customers' goal is to increase the customer experience by giving them the best services. In most cases, customers reciprocate good services by giving gifts top the employees who serve them. Gifts are considered kind gestures between individuals in social lives but can be considered a breach of integrity by the employee (Kelchner, 2017). An employee may find themselves torn between receiving and rejecting the gift from their customers. Rejection of the gift may hurt the feelings of the customers and might result in relationship breaking. In most cases, employees may fail to recognize ethical dilemmas they experience in life, which may result in major problems within the business. In social work, for instance, counseling, the provision of gifts may result in celebration or concerns. Some of the unethical dilemmas in social services include considering that the social worker manipulated the client to think gifts were necessary for good services or the consideration that the society did not create clear boundaries, which led to the client considering the worker as a friend gift.

Solutions to Ethical Dilemmas

Ethical dilemmas may get resolved by policies on gifting, or the employee may apply the self-determination principle. The first solution may adapt to the social worker's code of ethics, which advise the workers to avoid interest conflicts while conducting their work (Barsky, 2017). A social worker may create policies that set clear boundaries with the client, especially the client's extent, when appreciating the worker. The policies should be clear to the client, especially regarding when, what, why, and how it is presented. Policies will guide the client to recognize good services as part of the expectations in social work. The second solution allows the provider to apply the principle of self-determination, which allows the social worker to determine the gift-given impact. Social workers are committed to their clients' satisfaction, and when the clients' main intention is gratitude, the worker may accept the gift. However, when the worker feels exploited, the worker may reject the gift. The second limits the worker from receiving a gift when the client offers it after feeling the services they receive are inappropriate since they did not offer it in the first place.

The best recommendation for the ethical dilemma would be creating policies recognized by both the worker and the client. Policies prevent the adverse impact that may occur due to gift-giving. When the client feels obligated to offer gifts in any situation, the principle of beneficence and nonmaleficence must take effect. The principle holds that the accepting gift should aim to do good to the client and avoid the harm that may result in not receiving the gift. For instance, when the client offers a gift because they come in a culture that allows gift-giving is culturally common an accepted. Accepting the gift allows the worker to appreciate the client's culture hence a strong professional relationship. Policies are better than the principle of self-determination, which depends on judgment by either the worker or the client. The judgment of the factors leading to gift-giving may get biased to benefit the worker, especially when the gifts are expensive.

Ethics Training Program

Ethics Topic

Every business wishes to achieve a competitive advantage by becoming the best through its conduct and customer satisfaction. Although personal ethics cannot be taught, there is a need to train the employees to conduct themselves to reflect an ethical business. The employees need knowledge on how they should react to various scenarios that require their ethical values. The workers should learn most of the basic skills they should apply in their daily activities, including the organization's code of conduct, private responsibilities, and submission. The company's code of conduct would get included to allow the employees to identify the vision and mission of Paradigm Toys, which define the major codes of conduct. Conduct defines the actions that affect the company's operations by destroying the relationship between employees with stakeholders and or not accepted by the company.

Personal responsibility defines the behavior and conducts of individuals that may be subject to disciplinary action. This topic aims to make the employees accountable and responsible for their actions when working for Paradigm Toys. The training includes identifying behaviors not desired by the company, including general unlawful behavior, dishonesty, disobedience, drug consumption, theft, sexual harassment, negligence, and others. Compliance includes the strategies that would get applied by the employees to show their cooperation with the organization to correct unethical conduct. Training on this topic includes identifying punishment strategies that would get applied to individuals who fail to comply with the ethical policies and code of conduct.

Delivery Method

The instructor-led training method gets applied for the ethics training program to employees upon hire and within the business years. The delivery method includes an instructor providing information to a large group to create a general understanding of the training topics (Bylow et al., 2019). The effectiveness of the training program depends on the instructor's experience and training skills. The method is most effective in Paradigm Toys because it will consume the least time due to the large number of trainees being taught. The method allows interaction between the learners and the instructors through questions and instant answers. The method allows the employees to participate in role-play to influence their understanding and learning. Paradigm Toys is a huge organization that depends on the employees to express their learning experience in all its operations. The method allows the organization to pass uniform knowledge to a large group of employees, reducing the organization's risks of confusion and conflicting values.

References

Barsky, A. (2017). Ethics alive! The 2017 NASW Code of Ethics: What’s new. New Social Worker. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Allan_Barsky/publication/340677729_Ethics_Alive_The_2017_NASW_Code_of_Ethics_What%27s_New/

Bylow, H., Karlsson, T., Claesson, A., Lepp, M., Lindqvist, J., & Herlitz, J. (2019). Self-learning training versus instructor-led training for basic life support: a cluster randomized trial. Resuscitation, 139, 122-132. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300957219300942

Demirtas, O., & Akdogan, A. A. (2015). The effect of ethical leadership behavior on ethical climate, turnover intention, and...