Summary
After completing a sales training course, Sophie must fill in an expense voucher for the last week. She realized the significant issue that she could not include tips every person makes every day to service people in her expense voucher. She needs to decide whether to comply with accountants’ rules or find ways to include the tips in her voucher.
Sophie is located in the classic situation of a moral dilemma. According to Ferrell et al., a “moral dilemma is defined as a situation where the person is faced with multiple choices, all of which are undesirable as defined by the person” (8). She can accept the unnecessary loss of money. However, she can use techniques proposed by Emma to fill the receipts for service people fares and include them in expense vouchers, thereby violating the company’s policies.
Sophie can report issues to the company and prove the company policies break with corporate culture. For example, Valentine et al. indicate that corporate culture and group creativity are positively correlated and that these variables are associated with job satisfaction. Therefore, Sophie can provide the data showing that minor remarks in companies’ policies can drastically change staff’s attitude towards work in a positive direction.
Resolving Ethical Business Challenges
Lael needed to be involved in the reporting because she could not continue working there. To prove the presence of misconduct and harassment, she could ask other employees to report anonymously how the harassment occurred. Lael needs to find a new place where the company’s ethical culture will be appropriate because this environment positively affects workplace confrontation on misconduct, which will guard her against abuses (Kaptein).
In a simple form, ethical culture reflects how things are and work in the company (Rosen). Best East’s ethical culture works so that the company does not pay attention to the ethical regularities of the franchise employee handbook. In other words, ethical culture constitutes the system that encourages inaction and promotes silence of their staff on misconduct.
Lael needs to contact the company’s boss to describe the situation in his motel. Before contacting the boss, it is beneficial to collect the scripts of former employees’ personal stories on the harassment they have experienced. If the boss does not react and does not fire Nikhil, Leal will make this story public. Lael should realize that it is dangerous to work where the ethical culture works, as in Beas East.
Works Cited
Ferrell, Odies C., et al. Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making & Cases. Cengage Learning, 2019.
Kaptein, Muel. “From Inaction to External Whistleblowing: The Influence of the Ethical Culture of Organizations on Employee Responses to Observed Wrongdoing.” Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 98, no. 3, 2011, pp. 513-530.
Rosen, Jay. “What is Ethical Culture, and Why Does It Matter?” Corporate Compliance Insights. 2019. Web.
Valentine, Sean, et al. “Corporate Ethical Values, Group Creativity, Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intention: The Impact of Work Context on Work Response.” Journal of business ethics, vol. 98, no. 3, 2011, pp. 353-372.