Stilsim Personnel

This class has been an eye opener. I would not say that I was naive to ethical dilemmas going on around me but I never really looked at the situations as being as wrong as they are. This class has started by defining ethics for me, which is the dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions (Ethics). Ethics was always a word I understood but had never been able to give a formal definition. Our course started right in with social responsibility, businesses are getting away from the Milton Friedman thinking of the 1970’s of, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business--to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud” (Rethinking the Social Reponsibility of Business, 2005). Businesses are realizing that it is not just about maximizing profits, it is important to serve your stakeholders (customers, employees, community- any party that has a stake in what the organization does and how it performs) (Trevino & Nelson, 2007). Companies are now not just focusing on the minimum but instead using their strong presence to better everything they touch.

Corporate reputation plays a very important role within a company, as an employee you are responsible for your actions and how they affect the company. As noted in the text anytime you identify yourself as an employee of a company, you infer you are speaking on the companies behalf (Trevino & Nelson, 2007). Anytime employees use company letterhead, are contacted for a fellow/past employee recommendation, are contacted by news or press, or even volunteer for a nonprofit organization it is important to separate your personal views from the way your organization would handle or represent the business. Anytime employees are not sure they should always contact their company’s HR or public relations department.

Also discussed in the early part of the course was the prescriptive approaches to ethical decision making in business. The three approaches are consequentialist, deontological and virtue theories. The consequentialist theory focuses us on the results or consequences of the decision or action. The deontological theory base their decisions about what’s right on broad, abstract universal ethical principles or values such as honesty, promise keeping, fairness, loyalty, rights, justice, compassion and respect for persons and property. While virtue theory focuses more on the integrity of the moral actor than on the moral itself (Trevino & Nelson, 2007). When comparing the three consequentialist focuses on the outcome while deontology focus on rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior. Virtue differs from both by focusing on the character rather than the