Free Example of Ethical Issues in Business Essay

Business operations have reached a new level in recent times. Long ago firms started operating in order to satisfy the needs of the community. This satisfaction of the needs of the society was unidirectional as firms offered products or services to consumers only in return for monitory gain. Today, society’s needs have changed. The society wants businesses to carefully consider its general wellbeing needs . Issues such as pollution, environmental conservation as well as responsible exploitation of resources have become key wants of a community today. For a firm to claim to be catering for the needs of the society, the above issues should be effectively addressed.

Firms draw a lot from the community in which they operate. Resources such as labor force, raw materials, and market are some of the essential components that a firm extracts from the community it operates in (Cowen & Moorhead, 2011). Therefore, firms have to find means of rewarding the society. Furthermore, firms should work to rectify negative effects that their operations have on the society and the environment. For instance, production process could lead to production of pollutants in the form of by-products. In the above case, the firm should help the society to mitigate such deleterious effects on the environment.

In the case study about the company Q, a series of events have happened which made the company not to trust the community and its workforce.  The fact that the company has lost lots of money to extent of closure of branches can lead to the situation where a company has no incentive to improve society’s living standards. Company Q could be viewing the society as a bunch of thieves and burglars who have led to enormous loss of revenue. The effect presented above plus other factors could be the reason why company Q does not trust employees and views them as people who can be fraudulent when they are given an opportunity.  As mentioned above, it can be seen that company Q is pessimistic regarding social responsibility.

The Main Steps to Social Responsibility

There is a number of ways, which can assist the management of company Q to change its attitude towards social responsibility. The first one includes enhancing ethics in firm Q. This can go along the way in helping it to form a positive attitude towards social responsibility. One pointer to deteriorated morality in the firm includes fear of fraudulent deals seen in its management. This has far reaching consequences for the business as this firm chooses to discard food rather than donate it to the food bank due to fears of losing revenue because of fraudulent employees.

Discovery about the choice of this firm by the community may lead to negative publicity for the business. This has a potential of affecting consumers’ attitude adversely. Research that was done recently showed that firm’s public relations had a greater effect on promoting sales than advertising. For the above reason, firm Q should instill ethics in its workforce so that they can be trusted because this is one crucial way in which it can engage fruitfully in social responsibility with reduced fears of loss of revenue. This will have a remarkable effect on improving the relationship between the firm and the community and hence boost sales.

After ethic principles have been instilled in firms’ workforce, the second step to be taken in assisting the firm to attain positive attitude toward social responsibility will be cultivation of selflessness. This implies that the firm Q will have to cultivate societal form of morality and consider itself as a part of the society. Cultivation of a sense of selflessness will enable firm Q to volunteer in assisting the society even when no monetary gains are projected to accrue. In such ventures, it is possible that losses will occur or some employees will defraud the firm. However, with societal morality promoted among all workers this can be substantially reduced. Workers who are morally upright will find it hard to exploit firm’s noble deeds for their own selfish interests (Stanwick & Stanwick, 2009.).

Additionally, it is essential for all employees to be taught the virtue of selflessness as well as to view themselves as members of the society. In this case, they will strive to improve conditions of the society. Therefore, this will assist firms to communicate with the society effectively.

The third way in which firm Q could change its attitude towards social responsibility will directly involve its management. Concerns shown by the management regarding the possible loss of revenues should be addressed by managerial action that would involve a restructuring processes. The management can allocate responsibility of handing these products to people it deems trustworthy. There are some instances, however, when this cannot work effectively. Sometimes, this may require the management to engage in the process of disbursing day old products to minimize the chances of fraudulent employees to execute their malicious plans.

It is extremely essential for firm Q to overcome all hindrances to social responsibility because this is the proper way for the firm to participate actively in the development of the society. All society’s needs must be met by various firms and firm Q too can assist in achieving this goal. Firm Q is better positioned to meet society’s needs due to its size.

Products stored in the food bank are an essential society’s need and should be availed for the wellbeing of the society. Failure to do this will result in a failure to meet the needs of a society effectively. Members of the same society make up firm Q’s workforce, suppliers, and the market among others. These people will have to shift their attention as they will be thinking about how to improve the society if firm Q does not do that. Therefore, their performance will be significantly worsened and hence firm’s overall productivity and profitability will go down. The case illustrated above will be replicated among consumers, firm’s suppliers, and other groups. This will ultimately affect firm’s performance adversely. However, firm Q can avoid this by simply embracing social responsibility.