Executive Summary
In the agricultural contracting company located in New Zealand, Leading function of management is based on managerial principles and goals but it involves personality and charisma of a person. Leaders can work toward positive results. In this case, the role and responsibility of these managers is to develop moral and ethical; principles for the organization, while the task of managers is to introduce these principles into practice and control their fulfillment. Results are not the only thing, and the ends do- not justify all means. The personal codes of ethics help the agricultural contracting company to resolve moral issues and problems of moral choice. Independence is a critical concept that sets ethics apart from other professions.
This is the only exclusive function that the ethical codes perform for society. In rendering an opinion the professional assumes a public duty. Moreover, this public duty must transcend any employment relationship or other duty toward the client. Successful planning of fertilizer application and nutrient management requires recognition and authority at the top decision-making level related to the fertilizer application and nutrient management. Marketing programs must be carefully planned and based not merely on knowledge of internal corporate affairs, but also on knowledge of external environments and environmental safety issues. A homeostatic point of equilibrium between customer wants and needs, is called for on the one hand, and corporate goals and resources on the other. Managers and leaders call for the kind of attempt, restraint, drive, and discipline that result in effective performance.
Introduction
Planning and leading are two crucial parts of modern organizations. The modern agricultural economy depends upon and is influenced by effective management solutions and strategies. Planning and leading are concerned with setting goals, establishing policies and programs, and implementing business action for the entire firm. Its major tasks are to translate consumer wants and needs, actual and potential, into profitable products and services that the company is capable of producing; to cultivate markets to support these products; and to program the distribution activities necessary to reach the markets. The company under analysis is an agricultural contracting company from New Zeeland. The company proposes a wide range of services and products to agricultural consumers and farmers, so ethical issues and moral responsibility are the core of this business. The paper consists of the introduction, discussion section and conclusion.
Discussion Section
Management functions
Planning and leading play an important part in organizational behavior as they help management to provide administrative and supervisory activity of an entity. Planning and leading are not simply a limited specialized activity of the commerce, but rather a perspective for the entire management team (Buchholz and Rosenthal 2000). Planning does not function as a separate entity in the industry, nor is it more important than any other primary activity, such as manufacturing or economics, yet through actual and potential sales it does set up constraints within which the other activities must be performed. It reflects an integrated and coordinated method to the management of managerial activity, and the development of total systems of business achievement that recognize the marketplace as the focal point of business. Successful leaders have the gift for inspiring and motivating employees; they have vision and lift the spirit of employees to accomplish great ends.
The release of human possibilities is an essential leadership goal. Still, it is significant to differentiate moral and just leadership from the character of despots who, by definition, are effective leaders if they accomplish their goals through persuasion. For the agricultural contracting company, leading similar to leadership, is ethical. Managers mobilize and assign resources; they guarantee the continuing vitality of the staff; they generate and maintain appropriate procedures (Beauchamp and Bowie 2003). They also manage, delegate, and coordinate resources, and they provide a system of incentives to encourage and support productive behavior. Managers and leaders establish reporting systems, perform evaluations, and allocate accountability. Within the agricultural contracting company from New Zeeland Common to both managers and leaders is the focus on the outcomes they produce, which are based on the goals they pursue. The traditional definitions of management and leadership have concentrated on and described the management process. What a manager or leader does is vital, but descriptions do not address the function or purpose of management. The principle of management is to produce positive outcomes. Leadership is more than leading employees. Indeed, it has many more components. Leadership is also routine administration, supervision, and knowledge of procedures, rules, and set of laws; for example, it requires cooperation techniques, cost control, and legal responsibilities (Boatright, 2001).
Leading Function
An important part of leading is a knowledge and understanding of progression and procedures. Based on this results-oriented philosophy of leading function of management, the new definition of management focuses on outcome. For leadership, setting goals set up the pathway to positive results. Deciding what it is that you want to do is the goal-setting stage, doing it is the process, and accomplishing goals is the outcome or result. In the agricultural contracting company, the manager’s responsibility is to produce positive results. Setting clear, challenging goals and then doing what is necessary to accomplish them is the daily process. Success will be measured by the degree to which a goal is accomplished, but alas, life is not this simple. Remember that managerial performance is not judged entirely in terms of success or failure. Rather, performance is measured in terms of progress in relation to the goal. The focus is on lessons learned, and learning is a core value. In this sense, success becomes a journey, rather than a destination (Buchholz and Rosenthal 2000).
Planning Function
Planning begins with the assumption that the institution is a uniform, intractable structure directed in minutiae by control. Although very much authoritarian, the personal nature of real authority gives way to impersonal “policies” and “procedure. Planning becomes not a set of specific plans to be realized but a continuing desperate attempt to write enough regulations to control every aspect of the organization, to be enforced by the guardians of the establishment. And the control is strictly top-down, issuing in mandates without commensurate resources or authority; there is no bottom up, except the accountability for carrying out dictates. The problem is that results cannot be mandated. Planning not only takes on the characteristics of the institution, it reinforces them (Beauchamp and Bowie 2003). Rather than changing the system, planning is adapted to the defense of the system. Customer and supplier wants and needs are central to the marketing concept. Strategic planning must use research findings and concepts that will help in determining actual and potential wants and needs as a basis for guiding decisions. Strategy is the process of deciding how to best position the organization in its competitive environment in order to achieve and sustain competitive advantage, profitably (Carroll and Gannon 2004).
Ethical Issues and managerial principles
There are ethical limits. Criteria beyond effectiveness are needed. The strategic aims must be just, and there must be a moral responsibility to do what is right. Moral and ethical behavior patterns are a key element of positive results and success. Truthfulness suffers when managers and leaders demand or expect from their employees an exaggerated personal loyalty to mission (Drejer, 2002). The company’s code of ethics is based on the Judeo-Christian ethic. This ethics is generally considered to be the foundation of Western ethical and moral principles. In the agricultural contracting company, like duties of justice, “the standard of care” does not arise because of any culpability on the part of the organization. “The standard of care” rests upon the mere fact that there are other beings in the world whose condition can be made better. If the organization recognizes these beings and is able to improve their condition, then a “the standard of care” arises. The fact that “the standard of care” is recognized by managers of organizations is demonstrated by the fact that they cause corporations to make charitable contributions. One is hard pressed to swallow utilitarian way of thinking that such contributions may in the long run improve profitability by the formation of goodwill. In fact, the best arguments against such action are utilitarian in nature (Rokeach, 1979).
Duties of self-improvement are the most difficult duties of managers to translate to an organization. Duties of self-improvement rest on the issue that one can improve his/her own condition with respect to good value or intelligence. An example is the practice of organizations paying the cost of sending managers to universities to improve their skills and knowledge. Utilitarians would undoubtedly argue that such achievement is taken to improve profits through lower costs generated from the better management the organization expects to receive from better-educated managers (Gutman 1982). Organizations would undeniably justify this practice on such utilitarian grounds. Though, the ethics must truly be stretched to translate an individual manager’s education to the bottom line. A more credible explanation for such things as classes in human relations might be found in the desire to fulfill a duty for self-improvement. For example, one could argue that by failure to improve managers’ knowledge of agriculture ethics, a corporation has caused the public to incur greater risk of unethical conduct by the organization (Rokeach, 1973).
A commonly held and frequently cited moral rule is that business organizations have the duty to make profits. Total impact the agricultural contracting provides the broad classification into which the deontological basis suggested here will fit (Buchholz and Rosenthal 98). The classifications scheme could take the form of accounts set up for each of the duties that a n organization has chosen as applicable to it. Since doing one’s responsibility has an associated impact upon profit, an account would also be created to summarize those effects over periods of time. The agricultural contracting sphere is a key professional involved in assisting management with the task of setting responsibilities and with monitoring progress toward meeting such responsibilities.
Codes of ethics
In the agricultural industry, the main difference between personal and professional codes of ethics in the agricultural contracting company is that independence is not allowed in the profession. In the personal code, independence may be defined in a professional context as a state in which one is self-reliant and not easily influenced by others. Professionals rely upon their own expertise and judgment rather than opinions, biases, or emotions of other persons (Gutman 1982). Self-determination, as an ethical concept, is prominent in the agricultural contracting company. Indeed, all professionals should be independent in that they should not subordinate their judgment to make a client happy (Sims, 2001).
Business organizations are more likely to make fundamental and continuous corporate adjustments to the demands of shifting market environments (Beauchamp and Bowie 2003). To date, relatively few have truly adopted a market orientation, despite the lip service that has been paid to marketing as an orientation in business. Such factors as continued economic growth, increased disposable income, vigorous domestic and foreign competition, accelerating technology, automation, population decentralization, expansion, and innovation will spur the appearance of this new marketing form. Marketing is concerned with setting goals, establishing policies and programs, and implementing business action for the entire firm.
Its major tasks are to translate consumer wants and needs, actual and potential, into profitable products and services that the company is capable of producing; to cultivate markets to support these products; and to program the distribution activities necessary to reach the markets. Marketing is not merely a limited specialized activity of the business, but rather a perspective for the total management team. It does not function as a separate entity in the business, nor is it more important than any other primary activity, such as manufacturing or finance, yet through actual and potential sales it does establish constraints within which the other activities must be performed. The managerial approach to marketing stresses the problem-solving and decision-making responsibility of managers (Sims, 2001). ). The political and social views of professionals do not, usually, impinge upon work-related tasks (Gutman 1982). The system exists to be used, managers are told; a clever professional takes advantage of ambiguity and resolves it in the perceived best interest of his client. This is normal professional practice (Hemingway and Maclagan 2004
Conclusion
In sum, for agricultural contracting companies, the codes of ethics settle norms and conditions of work and industry requirements. The ethics concept in fertilizer application and nutrient management underlines that acting in a manner that produces the greatest amount of love, fulfillment, and “the standard of care”. That is, it contends that ethical action is the one that produces the greatest amount of love of all the alternatives available. In some measure any morally wrong act of a member of the profession affects the whole field because by its very nature the agricultural contracting company has advanced itself to society as a special society deserving special privilege and therefore having special responsibilities. Planning and leading functions of management help the organization to stipulate and ensure certain policies and steps in performance and effective collaboration with suppliers and buyers.
Recommendations
The example of the New Zealand Company shows that ethical principles should be a part of planning and leading processes. Also, ethical issues should be applied to controlling, studying and organizing functions (see appendix 1). The ethical codes should demand fair treatment of all people and high professional skills. Conflicts of moral duty come in various shapes, sizes, and intensities. Managers cannot anticipate all such problems. But what such conflicts have in common is both situational and philosophical. By situational the managers mean that a personal moral dilemma is experienced by the professional working in the agricultural contracting company. Some professionals are faced with a concern and, often, a hard choice situation. By philosophical, the managers mean that thinking about essentials–goals, purposes, reasons–is ignited by the moral conflict. Confronting ethical dilemmas in the professional field is a real task. Professional analysis morality demands adherence to the law. Such behavior, by the professional, is not inherently wrong. Nor is it subject to prosecution or condemnation if discovered. In the agricultural contracting company, especially, a premium is put upon creative interpretation of regulations (and of prior interpretations).
References
Beauchamp, T., and Bowie, N. (eds). (2003). Ethical Theory and Business, 7th edn, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Boatright, J. (2001). Ethics and the Conduct of Business, 2nd edn, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Buchholz, R. and Rosenthal, S. (2000). Business Ethics, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.
Carroll, S. and Gannon, M. (2004). Ethical Dimensions of International Management, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Drejer, A. (2002). Strategic Management and Core Competencies: Theory and Application. Quorum Books.
Gutman, J. A Means-End Chain ModelBased on Consumer Categorization Processes,” Journal of Marketing 46 (2), (Sspring1982), pp. 60-72.
Hemingway, C. A. and P. W. Maclagan. 2004 Managers Personal Values as Drivers of Corporate Social Responsibility’, Journal of Business Ethics 50 (1),33-44.
Sims, R.R. (2001). Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility: Why Giants Fall. Praeger.
Rokeach, M. (1973). The Nature of Human Values. New York:The Free Press,1973.
Rokeach, M. (1979). Understanding Human Values: Individual and Societal. New York: The Free Press.
Appendix
Functions of management
