Ethical Behavior

Your objective is to come up with a radical managerial education plan that will make ethical corporate conduct in the US the rule rather than the exception.

Only after moral failings and scandals have come to light can interest groups and the general public in the corporate sector begin to seriously question the managers' ethical standards. According to some experts, managers have been more interested in ethical management in recent years, and this has coincided with a decline in the public's trust in corporate governance and questions about the legitimacy of their leadership due to ethical consciousness. According to research, It has been noted that leaders are responsible for moral development in an organization and for that matter; they ought to be importance source of ethical guidance to their workers. Other people presume that ethics is a confidential matter that a person and his conscience share or something that is intimate. Moreover, some people might say that ethics has nothing to do with management because it might appear important because of the way we reach our goals, the way we behave as long as they are legitimate and legal. In addition, when it comes to management leadership, ethics has to do with everything and manager’s style of leadership is felt throughout the entire organization and their standard behaviors are important ingredient when it comes to culture and corporate climate (Bazerman, 1-5).

Similar to the above assertion

the term ethics is a philosophy that came from ethos a Greek word meaning character or custom that is responsible with prescription of behaviors and requirements, which implies that during the period of serving the philosophical principles values, there are unacceptable and acceptable ways of behaving. Experts argue that in any given situation, ethical behaviors are termed as traits that are considered right and good in relation to wrong and bad morally. In addition, the code of ethics is described as the moral principles and values that shape the behaviors of groups or individual people in relation to what is presumed to be bad or right. Moreover, ethical behaviors are considered to be principles that are morally and legally accepted by a bigger group of people although under some circumstances, there might be distinct interests, beliefs and values that are connected with the conflicts within multiple stakeholders in unclear events.

It is from the above explanations

that a researcher saw it necessary to develop a transformative strategy for educating managers that will make ethical behavior on the part of business in the U.S. the norm, rather than an oxymoron and this going to be through reviewing of relevant information that is connected with the topic.

Proposition one

The produce business graduates who follow good ethical business values, there are about six stages that can be followed and these stages were designed by Kohlberg. In stage one, he talks about punishment driven and obedience where people concentrate on repercussions of their actions which are geared towards them. For instance, a mistake is considered to be wrong morally there is punishment for the person who has committed that mistake. Under this stage, the more grave a mistake is the more worse a punishment is. In addition, as suffering is being apportioned, there can be creation of an inference where by the innocent people are also guilty. Forexample student refusing to follow someone’s advice because he thinks it would lead to punishment and other consequences and this can be illustrated by a student who tries to absent himself from lectures. The student can go ahead and refuse to follow the advice because he fears to be punished and this would imply that he has used the punishment and obedience driven morality (Badaracco, 47-55).

Stage two

Under this stage, an employee can go ahead and develop interests that are geared towards the benefit of everyone in the organization which would help in creation of an ethical behavior that would later on become organizational culture. The rationale is that every worker believes in what they consider to be their best interest without factoring in the relationships to other groups of individuals and reputation other people which is defined as the right behavior or expressed as what is there for that person’s position. The phase limits emphasis on the interests of groups of people but shifts concentration on the interests of single individuals. Hence, interests of others are not base on intrinsic respect or loyalty but instead it’s based on i will scratch your mentality as you scratch my back, For example, if a manager wants his employee to do some work, he may ask what is there for him, which will force the manager to give some allowance to motivate the employee to execute the task.

Stage three

According to Kohlberg, employees are considered to be adamant when it comes to disapproval or approval from other parties because of the views that come from the society and these are determined by social consensus whether good or wrong. Since people learn that being good benefits them, they try to be good students for purposes of living up the expectations of the society. Moreover, when things like golden rule, gratitude, and respect are being used by the society in relation to his person relationship, there can be evaluation of morality action and its consequences. This would help in bringing ethical behaviors among the business graduates and which would later turn in a normal practice in different organizations.

Stage four

Under this stage, he talks about social order obedience and authority which are responsible for maintaining a functioning community through obeying social conventions, dictums, and laws. In this phase, the central ideal is to stipulate what is wrong and right when it comes to moral reasoning unlike in stage four where the approval of an individual or society is required. Moreover, every individual or business graduate has an obligation to follow rules and regulations and if there is any violation, it’s considered morally not right. Hence the separation of bad domains from good ones is culpable under this process.

Stage five

In the business world, people are looked as individuals with distinct values, rights and opinions and this is termed as social contract. Since people have different perspectives, their opinions should be respected in a community or as individual opinions because laws are said to be social agreements instead of edicts that are rigid. Furthermore, there must be amendments to cater for the benefit of the biggest group of people and promotion of their general welfare. Moreover, this stage is crucial because it entertains compromise and leaves room for majority decision making. Hence this would help in creation of ethical behaviors with employees of different organizations in the United States of America.

Stage six

This is the last stage of Kohlberg’s model of development that emphasizes the universal ethical behaviors in organizations. The universal ethical principles are based on abstract moral reasoning whereby commitment to justice comes with its responsibility to violate unjust laws which are grounded in justice and are presumed to be valid only by insofar. In relation to the above, social agreements are not as important for action of deontic morality as legal rights. Some scholars argue that decisions are made in an absolute way rather than in a hypothetically condition. Moreover, if the person who business student believes that what he or she imagines for the other person is true, they can go ahead and execute that imagination. All the above creates the sense of togetherness instead of promoting individualism, hence creating a culture of ethical behaviors.

Proposition two

Under this section, there was evidence that unethical incident was taking place the trading floor of Enron. This was discovered by a lower employee in the manager hierarchy who feared to notify the top managers thinking that the orders had emanated from above. Since he was a junior worker, he feared to report this unethical behavior because of the reward that is sometimes attached to people who have attained tremendous results. However, such incidents can be eliminated with tools like monitoring. The concept of monitoring would appear that the management does not have trust in its employees. It would be in terms of legislation and internalcontrol which would lead to proper understanding of ethical behaviors at work. However, it has been noted that, there are a variety of opinions during the process of proposing an integrity health check in an organization (Gentile, 114-117). Hence, it’s wise to establish whether there will not be any contestation about the benefits of integrity initiative and whether it will be applicable or not. The integrity health checks that can be applied by different organizations to make sure those ethical behaviors are promoted and these include the following;

The internal audit

Internal audit would be conducted with external or internal resources after the board has approved the in internal auditors to engage a health check project in a yearly audit plan. Depending on the prevailing circumstances, operating division follow-ups are reported or counter parties and suspicious transactions are supervised by the internal audit after a health check has been conducted and a report produced.

The security department

There can be an arrangement between an external service provider and security department to provide a health check of an organization. The IT section authorizes the collection of information with the help of security department. Moreover, the security department will be responsible for investigation into suspicious transactions directly (Richard Minogue and Nigel Iyer 10).

Fostering the open and ethical culture

This is supposed to be done to offshore companies with a system of tax havens where agents and customers are identified during an integrity health check of sales transactions. The head of business unit together with corporate audit, must lead a joint team to thorough examine the activities of the companies. The actions that can be taken against the culprits include disclosing the corrupt payments, disciplining the worst offenders, and ceasing all the business that engage in such activities like the ones Enron engaged in.

Chopping large unwarranted and unnecessary costs

Some experts argue the easiest way to eliminate case like what happened in the Enron documentary is to develop effective and simple solutions that enhance internal controls for purposes of retendering the contract and procurement of professional department that can do their job. The quality of services can able to improve because annual costs will be halved.

The service

With or without external resources, the shared services department can go ahead to develop a process of health check and provide more services to customers who are internal. The sponsorship of a health check project should be done by a consultant with the help of local management company or the top management. In addition, it’s the senior executive or the chief financial officer who executes the project. Experts argue that companies differ when it comes to approving and organizing health checks of projects that are credible. Hence consensus and support are necessary during shared monitoring by the top management as it is seen to reduce conflicts that are political (Legislative Excess 1).

Proposition three

An eye-opening challenge to the foundation of corporate capitalism myths should be characterized by social good, profit maximization, and self-interest beyond an invisible hand when trying to inculcate the principles of ethical behaviors to business graduates. Under this section, there must be the introduction of compliance and regulation in philosophical ethics in the operations of businesses. Researchers argue that businesses can be perceived as a daily part of people’s lives and the ideal is that it becomes incompatible with our standard of ethical thinking if we think that it’s just a mere exchange for profit. This calls for a paradigm shift in the occurrence of businesses in their ethical practices. Furthermore, profit maximization is superseded when the framework of thinking about a business evolves. A paradigm shift in the analysis of businesses entails citizenship and sustainability that focuses on new ways of doing business in current firms (Enron Documentary).

Basing on the information provided, corporate transparency and corporate citizenships can be implemented as an intelligent regulation on regulatory brilliance or legislative excesses. This would help in improving the ethical behaviors of business graduates. The rationale is that compliance and regulation also deal with doing what is right and dividend policy where the integrity perception of the management is instrumental in achieving profitability, employee turnover, and customer satisfaction. In ethical behaviors of employees, leadership is infective if it lacks behavioral integrity. One of the researchers stressed that multinational companies have executed basic health services as a way of responding to malnutrition and fighting diseases which lead to creation of moral capital for the business (Financial Deregulation Section 2.3).

It has also been proven that buying behavior is affected by the consumer perceptions of the ethical corporate status. So if the business graduates want to attract more clients, they have evaluated their ethical behaviors in the business for example in the world of commerce, regulation, and compliance characterize various hindrances to the long term success of any business. These include; crisis of sustainability, inequality in the form of workplace rights and compensation, and a crisis of trust. Due to the awareness of the problems that are related to the above factors, stakeholders, consumers, and suppliers are becoming more worried about the conduct of the corporate world. Moreover, consumer behavior has been factored into the corporate social responsibility (Legal Template, article).

Conclusion

In conclusion therefore, developing a transformative strategy for educating managers that will make ethical behavior on the part of business in the U.S. the norm, rather than an oxymoron is explained above with an illustration of various practical examples in the country. This would help in acting as a guiding documenting to the new candidates of business who be graduating.

Works Cited

"Legal Template" D2L Supplementary Material.Article,

"Legislative Excess," Chapter 11 in the Friedland course textbook.

Badaracco, J. J. L. Leadership in Literature, Harvard Business Review.2006 (Vol. 84, pp. 47-55)

Bazerman, M. H. Evaluating Your Business Ethics: A Harvard professor explains why good people do unethical things.Gallup Management Journal Online.2008 (pp. 1-5): Gallup Poll News Service.

Enron Documentary (The Smartest Guys in the Room);

Gentile, M. C.Keeping Your Colleagues Honest. Harvard Business Review.2010 88(3), 114-117.

Richard Minogue & Nigel Iyer,Going the right way: the ethics and integrity trend (Fraud Intelligence).2009

"Financial Deregulation" in the "After Shame" article on D2L under "Supplementary Materials."Section 2.3