Case Study: Business Ethics

Introduction

When the usual management philosophy is dependent on the ethical and valuable methods and actions, the leaders in any firm are capable of giving directions to the workers by example and also provide guidance, police and good practice to them for making decisions and to run the firm well which are not just advantageous for them as people but also for the organization on the whole. Establishing on the base of the ethical attitude supports in developing the long-lasting impacts for the firm involving the capacity for attracting as well as retaining the highly skilled people and developing as well as maintaining the positive reputation inside the community.

The objective of this report is

• To identify and discuss recent scandals on accountability transparency and employee ethical conduct.
• To develop policies and procedures for PA organization, so that all the operations are performed ethically.
• To recommend and justify leadership model for ethical change.

Scandal of Battery Gate

In the recent years, one of the major scandals to hit Apple is the ‘battery gate’ of December 2017 .This has been opened up when it has been declared by the Reddit user that the performance of their iPhone batter have been reduced after updated the software but when it has been replaced with a new battery this had corrected itself. Huge press coverage is given to this issue after this post and it has been suggested by some of the commentators that Apple is slowing down the devices intentionally to show its aged and force the customers to upgrade.

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After a week of this breaking new, a statement has been delivered by Tim Cook regarding this matter that the software was planned to regulate the performance but claimed that the intentions were not to slow down the performance but avoiding the unanticipated shutdowns, which can greatly impact the older batteries and devices. As a good will gesture for the ones with the affected phones, discount on battery replacements has been offered by the company.

Volkswagen Emissions Scandal

The scandal of the emissions of Volkswagen VW which is also named as the emission gate and also as diesel gate took place in the September of the year 2015 when the EPA a short term used for Environmental Protection Agency of US declared that it has been believed that emission test had been cheated by Volkswagen. It looked as the firm had been involving what was being explained by the commentators of market as the defeat device in the diesel cars that involved a software that would be capable of detecting when the cars would be undergoing the tests of laboratory and initiate the controls for decreasing the amount of emission of nitrogen gas.

Then the cars would be seem to comply with the criteria and standards of market but in few situations they were in fact emitting nitrogen dioxide more than forty times the limit as mentioned while driving on the way. The discovery made the investigations to become viral all over the globe having some estimates that suggest that 11 million cars were impacted by this scandal (Rhodes, 2016)

Risks that would Affect the New PA

Few of the basic ethical risks which are involved in the PA or procurement agency involve the following:

• Conflict of interest

A quite common situation of risk linked to the ethics in this agency is named as interest conflict. This type of risks could be explained as the commonly or direct exclusive contradiction among the interest of the procurement agency and the personal interests of the PA officer.

• Declaration

It is a good method of having the officials to get engaged in the process of procurement involving those who take part in the panels of offer opening, assessment or agreement committees as the advance of their obligations, the announcement of no contradiction in interest. Truthfulness, incorruptibility, honesty and impartiality are required to be implemented (Schiermeier, 2015)

• Gifts and gratuities

The basic contradiction of interest in the condition that needed to be faced by PA is whether to or not to embrace the gifts given by the government, partners or the suppliers. Providing the gifts to the customers is quite a normal thing when it comes to the private sector. It is basically a strategy for marketing which is based on the global or universal way of reciprocation. Therefore, the normally different kinds of gifts are offered by the suppliers for instance the free courses of training or exhibition experiences, donations, perishable products and fair trade etc. which are linked with the event of certain UN firm (Cameron, 2012).

For avoiding the occurrence of the unethical method in the actions, interactions and connections care must be taken. All the events of procurement carried out on the behalf of the procurement agency must be in harmony with the criteria mentioned in federal, local as well as state laws. It is the duty of the all the members of procurement agency to make it sure that the agency is not willing for entering into any kind of buying contract that could end up in the interest conflict. The units having the questions related to the certain condition must connect with the services of procurement. The management of these services is known to be the actual decision maker on the fact that whether the events related to this activity has the purpose of the unethical method or not. (Grojean et al., 2004).

Conflict of Interest

Procurement agency is specifically thorough earlier being getting involved into the agreements of buying with the workers, their members of family or any other people who would be seen as having the possible conflict of interest. The conditions where the supplier complied with any worker of university is looking for the agreement with the university for the provision of the same services that are being provided by the workers in their position as the university workers need the specific focus and attention due to their higher possibility of conflict.

PA employees should not make purchasing decisions or otherwise influence the university’s decisions to do business with any supplier affiliated with the university employee, a relative of the university employee or any other individual who would be perceived as a potential conflict. The workers of PA must quickly reveal in writing all the possible or currently present issues to the official of the university as the possible or currently present risks take place or they are recognized. In the same way the university workers must reveal this information to the management of procurement services (Moon, 2015)

Gratuities from Supplies

The workers of PA must never accept or ask loans, entertainment, services, money, credits, favors and gifts from suppliers. These kinds of gratitude’s even if they are of low worth could initiate any kind of interest conflict. Specifically, the workers of university must never embrace these kinds of favors from the supplier who has entered or might enter the bid for the agreement of for which the solicitation of the bid is being developed or is currently accepting them (Fisher, 2017).

Confidentiality

The workers of the procurement agency must control the secret or confidential data with specific care and appropriate consideration of the lawful and the ethical consequences and rules of government. The workers of procurement agency might not reveal the terms, conditions, prices etc. to the external parties which are told them by their suppliers. These kinds of services must be already approved with the external parties related to the possible or expected connection who are linked with procurement.

Ethical Leaders

Leadership is the influential procedures that allow the managers for getting their people for doing things which are required. The term leadership is explained as the relation of power and value among the followers and leaders who require real variations that indicate their common objectives and purposes. In respect to the normative ethics of the company the leadership would be explained as how the people must act in any firm. This involves the theories related to the standards that explain the ethical decisions as well as traits of personality (Ferrell and Fraedrich, 2015).

The ethical leadership is quite critical and quite essential in giving the directions which allow the firm to accomplish the vision and missions and the strategy which have been already set by the firm. The ethical leadership of the procurement agency is known as the main element in the management of the image of the firm in the outside environment and as compared to the competitors. More health of the PA is based on the criteria and the instances of the upper management. The Procurement agency must accept the style of transformation leadership when they implement the ethical variation. This kind of leadership is the phenomenon of the leadership in which the leader works with the different teams for recognizing the required change developing the vision for guiding by the inspiration as well as performing the change with the serious and focused members of the team as it is the fundamental part of the entire range of leadership.

The encouragement, performance of job and morale of followers by the wide range of the systems, these involve relating to sense of followers to recognize and self to the condition and for entire identity of project interest, giving tough time for taking the bigger responsibility for their performance and knowing the strong as well as weak points of the followers that could help prevent what happen on scandal of battery gate , enabling the leader for aligning the followers with the tasks that improve their work (Al-Shammari, 2016).

There are 4 basic parts of this leadership mentioned below:

• Intellectual Stimulation

These kinds of leaders not just challenge the establishment but also motivate the followers towards creativity.

• Individualized Consideration

For the purpose of fostering the supportive relationships, these leaders continue the communication lines so that followers mustn’t hesitate in sharing the ideas so that direct recognition could be offered of the unique parts of all followers.

• Inspirational Motivation

transformational leaders own the vivid perspective that they can explain to them

• Idealized Influence

These leaders act as the role model for the subordinates. As they respect as well as trust the leader, they imitate this person and its visions (Tannenbaum, Weschler and Massarik, 2013).

The transformational leaders are those people who inspire as well as motivate the workers for accomplishing the excellent results and in that procedure establish the capacity of leadership as well.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Ethical business conduct is important for the success of any organization. Today, customers have access to information easily and any unethical business conduct can significantly impact the image of the company ultimately impacting its performance and profitability. From the two recent cases of ethical misconduct Eron and Volkswagen it can be concluded that managing operation ethically is important for the success of the company.

• To ensure all the operations of PA are being ethically managed it is necessary that code of conduct and ethical standards are developed for all the activities in the company.
• PA must also ensure that employees are properly aware of these codes of conducts and are properly trained to follow these codes by having ethical practices.
• PA must also ensure that all the law, regulations and policies are being followed by preform yearly evaluation and feedback.

References

1. Al-Shammari, M. ed., 2016. Ethical and social perspectives on global business interaction in emerging markets. IGI Global.
2. Cameron, K., 2012. Positive leadership: Strategies for extraordinary performance. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
3. Ferrell, O.C. and Fraedrich, J., 2015. Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Nelson Education.
4. Fisher, J., 2017. Business marketing and the ethics of gift giving. Industrial Marketing Management, 36(1), pp.99-108.
5. Grojean, M.W., Resick, C.J., Dickson, M.W. and Smith, D.B., 2004. Leaders, values, and organizational climate: Examining leadership strategies for establishing an organizational climate regarding ethics. Journal of business ethics, 55(3), pp.223-241.
6. Li, Y., 2010. The case analysis of the scandal of Enron. International Journal of business and management, 5(10), p.37.
7. Moon, M.J., 2015. E-procurement management in state governments: diffusion of e-procurement practices and its determinants. Journal of Public Procurement, 5(1), pp.54-72.
8. Rhodes, C., 2016. Democratic business ethics: Volkswagen’s emissions scandal and the disruption of corporate sovereignty. Organization Studies, 37(10), pp.1501-1518.
9. Schiermeier, Q., 2015. The science behind the Volkswagen emissions scandal. Nature News.
10. Tannenbaum, R., Weschler, I. and Massarik, F., 2013. Leadership and Organization (RLE: Organizations): A Behavioural Science Approach. Routledge.