Every organization wishing to function properly and in coherence with public interests has to stipulate the set of corporate ethics and a fixed, transparent moral code. The importance of ethical basis in business functioning has been proved long ago and has shown its efficiency in implementation.
However, there is always a question of who this morality and ethics should be directed at stakeholders, employees, or the common public constituting the consumers of a definite firm. From the point of view of virtue ethics the person who does something has to be put to the fore in the process of the action and not to the action itself. Thus, it becomes reasonable to judge business activities from the point of view of businessmen.
Their main virtue has always been considered gaining profit and ensuring the successful functioning of the company. Consequently, it appears to be the philosophy of business virtue ethics that the company and its employees should act by the mission statement of a company and ensure its continuous fulfillment through their commitment to the company in which they work.
Moral pluralism is a notion that has become of really high interest only recently. The issues discussed in this respect concern the extent to which moral, spiritual or religious diversity should be accepted at the working place and which way managers should deal with it. Evidently, the manager’s task is to bring the work of the team under his or her authority to compliance in their actions and overall activity at work. In this respect, it would be better to establish a unified corporate culture defining the profile of the company and requiring strict compliance from the side of its employees in order to create a firm moral, spiritual foundation for its further activity.
Nonetheless, every employee in every company is an individual and he or she needs personal space to be able to remain him- or herself. These differences and peculiarities should be thoroughly taken into consideration by the managerial staff in order to form such an ethical behavior code that would comply with the overall goal of the company and at the same time would satisfy the diverse needs of the personnel.
The common problem for every manager in the contemporary business world is to create an ethical behavior profile that would be homogeneous, clear, and attractive, thus ensuring the willingness of employees to follow it and to comply with the standards of an organization. The hardship of this creation is explained by the fact that nowadays business activities are gradually becoming more and more unethical, illegal, and immoral. The pursuit of profit and personal benefit results in continuing practices of foul play in business and the decreasing commitment to ethics substituted by individual considerations of what is the right or wrong thing to do.
Morality and decency have lost their meaning and have been pulled backward by the managers and businessmen obsessed with success and putting it to the fore neglecting morality and honesty. In order to avoid such a situation at the working place a skillful manager has to undertake a set of strategic actions on the way of establishing a code of ethics that would fit the consumers, the company profile, and the employees:
Today’s manager needs to create an ethically healthy climate for his or her employees, where they can do their work productively and confront a minimal degree of ambiguity regarding what constitutes right and wrong behaviors (Robbins and Judge, 2008).
Looking at corporate management from the point of view of conflict of interest it becomes clear that the main discrepancy lies in what direction the ethical code of a certain company takes and to which standards, according to which considerations it is designed. According to the opinion of Stephen P. Robbins and Mary Coulter (2006), the authors of “Management” firms have social responsibility besides their own, personalized vision of ethics which is purely subjective: “firms have a moral responsibility to larger society “to do the right thing”.
This fact underlines the conflict of interest that may be raised from this fact – firms’ interests may often be completely different from those of the common public. It is enough to take the example of chemical processing plants built near rivers, lakes, or other ecologically clean areas and contaminating the environment, or companies dealing with the production of cigarettes or alcohol drinks, knowing that they are taking up anti-social activity but gaining profit on marketing those unhealthy goods.
Power distance plays a great role in the establishment of relations between the administrative staff of the company and its regular employees. The hierarchy has many implications in the course of work of the company and the way employees perceive their place in the organization. Surely, a company with small power distance has more chances for success and more opportunities for engagement of the personnel in active participation in the life of the company:
Within a company, the degree of unequal treatment is reduced to a low level. There is an interdependence between employer and employee. The salary range is narrow between the top and bottom in companies. Subordinates expect to be consulted within the decision-making process (Power Distance, 2009).
Hence, it is possible to say that even huge companies with large power distance have to make much effort to ensure the reduction of the gap between employees and coordinators to create a healthier environment at the workplace for their staff.
References
Power Distance (2009). Web.
Robbins, S.P. and Coulter, M. (2006). Management. 9th Ediition. Prentice Hall.
Robbins, S.P. and Judge, T. (2008). Organizational Behavior, 13th Edition. Prentice Hall.