Understanding, accepting and applying ethical standards
Understanding, acceptance, and application of ethics play a very important role to individuals and certain groups. First, all workers want to feel good during their work and enjoy proper working conditions, only in this case, people can present successful work and results. Proper understanding of ethics helps to comprehend what behavior is appropriate in the organization; proper acceptance of ethics should increase productivity and improve communication between workers, and the application of ethics will promote overcoming of conflicts and create one common idea of the right things to do.
Let us examine how ethical behavior is important for the group of people, working within the banking system and take the representatives of Harris Bank in Chicago, Illinois. With the help of the code of ethics, employees and managers of the bank should comprehend what kind of information has to be confidential and what facts should be announced to its clients. Any banking system usually requires certain control, this is why unethical behavior in Harris Bank can easily hurt the group and announce information that should be hidden according to the principles of the ethical code.
Bank Ethics Cooperation
Mr. Cooper believed that his skills were not properly evaluated by his colleagues: he was eager to have many clients, but his manager still found it very risky to trust serious clients, because Mr. Cooper made mistakes, and these mistakes had to be corrected by other employees. Once, Mr. Cooper noticed that Mr. Taylor, another banker, accepted a bribe from the customer to hasten money transfer. Soon, Mr. Cooper wrote a message to the CEO of the bank, informed about that accident, and also mentioned how unfair his colleagues’ treatment was to get some kind of promotion. As a result, Mr. Taylor was fired because of bribery, and Mr. Cooper was fire because he overestimated his duties and the idea to get a promotion using the other worker’s mistake. Mr. Cooper did not discuss this issue with anybody and took it to the highest level out of hand. He did not contact the bank’s ethics officer and even did not approach his immediate manager. This is why his whistleblowing was fairly punished and lead to fast dismissal.
Approach to making good decisions
There are two possible approaches to make a decision properly: prescriptive and descriptive (Trevino & Nelson, 2004). Each of these approaches presents reliable information on how to make a decision correctly and which tools to use.
The first important point in making decisions is to gather the facts about the matter. Very often, facts may be unavailable, this is why it takes a certain time to find all the necessary facts to analyze the problem.
Another significant point is the obligation to think about consequences. It is necessary to think about the consequences of each of own actions; and to achieve better results while a decision-making processes, people have to reduce the number of consequences, analyze which consequences will be important for self and the other members of the group, and finally, clear up whether some consequences may take place over time.
The last point is to consider the idea of integrity: people usually think positively about themselves, this is why it is very important to evaluate the situation from a different perspective and not to be sure about their own correctness to make a successful decision.
Reference List
Trevino, L. K. & Nelson, K. A. (2004). Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk about how to Do It Right. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.