Business Studies

In a reflective essay, share your observations of your experience learning about business ethics and ethical principles using the following concepts:
o Business ethics.
o Ethical principles.
o Organizational issues.
o Personal and organizational learning.
o Other important features discussed in the course.
o Your learning experience in the course.
o Your areas of greatest or least development or understanding of these concepts.

ANSWER

Reflective Paper

Introduction

The path of study through this course was primarily centered on understanding business ethics, ethical principles, and other related concepts within an organization. Organizations set principles and rules that employees have to follow while doing business. Ethics have been utilized in conducting businesses since they act as guidelines that allow acceptable businesses to be conducted in daily transactions and operations. The set of rules have set a standard for the organization to regulate their behavior. Business ethics, ethical principles, personal and organizational learning, as well as solutions to organizational issues, have enabled businesses to balance between the desired profits and the stakeholder’s needs. This ensures that organizations gain money without influencing society or individuals as a whole.

Business Ethics

Business Ethics are unwritten and written values that govern choices and actions within organizations. These are forms of professional and applied ethics that scrutinize moral as well as ethical principles and issues that rise in the workplace. Ideally, business ethics could be defined as appropriate business policies and business practices. Business ethics offer guidance since they are policies through which decision-makers should direct their actions to deal constructively with a situation (Schwartz, 2017). Business ethics has played a vital role in organizations with different values and norms. This is because individuals need to know how to behave amid people with different cultural backgrounds. Additionally, employees tend to make better decisions within less time with business ethics as a guiding principle.

Business ethics have prevented the business from taking part in unethical business practices that can lead to significant consequences once discovered (Schwartz, 2017). For instance, a business can engage in unethical businesses, such as offering misleading or false information to the clients. Businesses can offer misleading information about their products for them to ensure that their products appear better than their competitors to increase their profit and sales. However, false information can cause harm and lead to hefty fines or closure of business due to the loss of customers. Businesses engage in an unfair competition where it utilizes strategies to run the business and bring down rivals. Unfair competition comes from actions such as defamation, trademark infringement, and other action that offers consumers the wrong impression of other organizations. Social responsibility and corporate governance have offered guidelines and morals that need to be followed in the business world.

Businesses need to follow the correct business ethics since they stand to benefit from it in different ways. One of the importance of business ethics is to enable an organization to help in building a loyal client base. This is because consumers are increasingly sensitive to the conduct of the organization and show loyalty to businesses that are free of conduct and moral scandals. Business ethics have enabled companies to create a positive and productive environment where the business associates and employees are treated fairly. Business ethics have become the driving force for businesses that are putting a priority on social responsibility and enhancing the quality of life for the consumers (Schwartz, 2017). This is because business ethics have enabled companies to adopt ethical behaviors and corporate social responsibility to attract more consumers and experts to the organization.

Ethical Principles

Ethical principles refer to the initial philosophical stands that indirectly or directly result in ethical standards.  Four major ethical principles entail the principle of non-maleficence, principle of respect for autonomy, the principle of justice and the principle of beneficence. The principle of autonomy argues that people are obligated to respect the decisions that are made by others concerning their own lives (De George, 2011). Considerably, following the principle of autonomy allows for moral rules such as respecting the privacy of others, telling the truth, and being honest. The principle of beneficence states that everyone must bring about the best in all actions. Ideally, the moral rules of beneficence entail defending and protecting others from violation of rights and harm, helping those with disabilities, as well as rescuing people when in danger.

The principle of non-maleficence states that each needs to ensure that they cause no harm to others. This principle has supported rules such as do not cause pain, do not kill or offend another person. The principle of justice argues that individuals must offer others whatever they deserve. The principle of justice ensures that people are treated equally. Ethical principles ensure that the customers and the employees have fair consideration and treatment through increasing the level of trust between the consumers and the business. Proper ethical principles are guided by business ethics, which is the framework that business to remain suitable to the potential client and general customer. It is significant for organization executives to strive for success and growth as well as a place established guidelines of how the employees are treated or behave within the organization as well as dealing with the consumers and competitors.

Ethical principles are generally known guidelines that are relevant for business ethics since they offer the primary objectives and goals that one has to keep in mind while practicing business ethics (De George, 2011). Being compassionate, benevolent, and kind are traits of ethical employees and leaders within an organization. They are willing to fulfill the business objectives and help people in need, which will lead to the highest level of good.

The success of every company depends on several factors, which include the organizational culture, ethical conduct, and management philosophy. The employment of ethical principles begins with leaders and the management, which establishes day to day running within the company. Considerably, when the management accepts to apply the ethical practices and behaviors, they act as examples to the organization. This enables the management to build a capable reputation and reap the benefits of ethical practices.

Ethical principles strengthen employee relationships, boost the morale of employees, and enhances the loyalty of the employees (De George, 2011). Through proper execution of ethical principles, a business can build a solid reputation and sustain growth over time. This is because the organization can create a suitable environment with employees and management forming a team to work cohesively and embrace ethical business practices.

Organizational Issues

Organizational issues are considered as the problems that arise within an organization due to a lack of management of business ethics that are prevailing within the business environment. Many roads have led to organizational issues at the workplace in the daily operations and affect the performance of the organization. As organizations continue to diversify, workplace problems have continued to increase. Some of the organizational issues include poor communication, lack of direction, poor teamwork, sexual harassment, discrimination, feedback problems, work-life balance, and meeting customer expectations.

Organizational issues have severely affected teamwork, where employees have failed to complete their assigned responsibilities and tasks (Garrison, 2016). Organizational issues have stuck every company with underlying causes being a lack of adequate and open communications and the use of wrong organizational structure. One of the organizational issues that businesses face is the lack of sufficient direction where the organization and workers are unsure of the objectives and goals they should be achieving.

When an organization lacks direction, the employees feel scattered while resources are wasted. The employee talents are wasted on things that don’t benefit the organization. Having a common goal enables an organization to remain productive and prevent it from deviating its path. The leaders should be able to identify what they wish to accomplish, to determine the organization’s direction and the strategies that they need to adhere to. The organization needs to effectively communicate to each member within the organization to ensure long term growth and sustainability.

Organizations also face challenges in the formation of the best teams to assume the project, which becomes difficult due to the different abilities and personalities of the employees (Garrison, 2016). For instance, team members lack creativity, group thinking, inability to solve conflicts, and poor communication. It is very challenging to build multiple personalities into unified and cohesive teams. Ensuring that a diverse population is always together will always come with challenges and conflicts.

The leaders have an obligation of exploiting and identifying opportunities that diversity can offer to workers within a team. Various assessments and tools have been developed over the years to enable leaders to understand personality and behaviors that can assist in team management and development. It’s also essential for leaders to ensure that their teams have been enforced with clear goals and purpose and encourage the team to have open communication that will assist them in working collaboratively. Poor communication has been a big issue in organizations where the organization has unclear communication protocols and avenues that make sharing of information slow and challenging. Leaders within an organization need to establish clear communication protocols and procedures to ensure that every employee can access and is aware of the procedures.

Considerably, communication is a significant element in effective collaboration. Therefore, this means that whether written, oral or body language should be efficient and effective. Additionally, communication has to flow from every side. Feedback is also essential since it helps the team members within an organization to work effectively and remain motivated (Garrison, 2016). Maintaining the worker’s work-life balance has been a critical issue due to the struggles of employees to balance work and life. Organizations are adapting and developing strategies to ensure that workers have a sufficient work-life balance.

Relatively, managing the changing customer expectations and relationships by offering efficient and timely services to satisfy the desires and needs has been a significant issue in organizations. This is because it is more challenging to perform efficiently, better, and productively to satisfy customers as well as maintain a long-lasting relationship with them.

Personal Learning and Organizational Learning

Learning is considered a long life process whereby individuals and organizations can learn new things daily for continuous development and growth. Learning plays a significant role in ensuring that people are better and increases their skills and knowledge to handle new challenges and tasks. Personal learning is considered as the employee and individual level where a person learns and grows to be a better individual through getting themselves exposed towards training, knowledge skill enhancement as well as varying job style learning within an organization (Sessa and London, 2015). Organizational learning includes significant changes or innovations within an organization that make it lead towards the achievement of new objectives and goals as well as continuous improvement of the current organizational approaches.

Organizational learning entails the continuous improvement of strategies and existing approaches through systematic processes (Sessa and London, 2015). Ideally, an organization learns through their daily activities where learning focuses on sharing knowledge and building each other across the organization. The available opportunities and innovations drive this within the organization. Organizational learning improves the organization in ways such as adding their value to the customers, improving the services and products, increasing effectiveness and productivity, reducing costs of operations and errors as well as developing new business processes and models.

On the other hand, personal learning is achieved through education, training as well as other experiences that promote development and growth. Personal learning results in a more engaged and knowledgeable employee who are ready to undertake the new challenges and tasks (Sessa and London, 2015). Personal learning also promotes innovation, where people come up with new approaches and ideas to solve everyday problems. Ideally, a successful business has three significant features: individuals facilitating success, individual learning, and organization structure to facilitate the learning process. Ideally, to be effective, personal learning within the workplace requires information flow that allows the delivery of what an individual want to learn. Organizations have developed their learning practices that have been used to offer individuals with learning that is necessary to get their jobs conducted efficiently.

Conclusion

My learning experience in business ethics and ethical principles has been one of the nurturing concepts in my life. The most significant concept I understood in business ethics is the moral obligation of a business and its employees towards society. Business ethics is essential in conducting business activities, responsibly, and ethically. Organizational issues have existed over the years, but the learning process has enabled employees to learn their values and ethics in an organization.

References

De George, R. T. (2011). Business ethics. Pearson Education, India.

Garrison, D. R. (2016). Organizational Issues. In E-Learning in the 21st Century (pp. 159-170). Routledge.

Schwartz, M. S. (2017). Business ethics: An ethical decision-making approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Sessa, V. I., & London, M. (2015). Continuous learning in organizations: Individual, group, and organizational perspectives. Psychology Press.