Mgt 426 - Ethics in Change

Ethics in Change

MGT/426

Ethics in Change

Organizations that change will want to do so in an ethical manner.  Businesses that try to create changes in an unethical manner will most likely harm their company at the very least, not including the stakeholders. By going things ethically, it will ensure that an organization is protecting the best interest of their business.  Organizations being ethical will help them enormously, along with everyone involved with them.

If there has been unethical behavior going on in an organization, the organization needs to examine the behavior and dismiss the unethical people to save the organization.  By creating a code of ethical conduct, this will give guidelines and practices that are ethical in nature.  The guidelines will be straightforward to avoid confusion.  

Organizations that have a catastrophe occur; they can go about fixing it two different ways, either ethically or unethically.  Firestone, for instance had a recall of over six million of their tires. This was considered a crisis for the organization.  The company decided to do things in an unethical nature, and used crisis management change strategies.  

The change strategies they used were mortification, correction action, bolstering, denial, and shifting the blame.  The used mortification whenever they apologized to the families who had members killed.  Corrective action was whenever Firestone recalled over six million tires that were faulty.  Bolstering happened during the recall, and tried to show the public that safety was a top priority for the company. The denial strategy was whenever the president said that the accidents that happened where not due to the tires that were recalled.  The last strategy, shifting the blame, was whenever Firestone president blamed Ford Motor Company for recommending inappropriate tire pressures for the tires (Akin, Dunford, & Palmer, 2006, ).

Firestone went about the crisis in a way that left many customers with a bad taste of their mouth so to speak.  Firestone knew about the faulty tires before the recall happened, but they did nothing to fix the problem until the deaths started piling up.  If they were acting ethically, the organization would have let the public know about the problems with the tires, and that could have saved lives.  
        Managers have some say in the organizations they are employed by.  The changes that happen within an organization are put into place to help maximize efficiency and productivity.  Managers are the individuals who help facilitate change.  The managers will be able to herd the troops so the change can happen with efficiency.  Managers are the members of management that spend the most time with the individuals employed by the company.  They should have the least amount of trouble persuading or enticing the individuals to the changes that will be coming.