Personal Ethics Action Plan
As an ethics student, I have learned that ethics are fundamental in business since they set the expected standards in the workplace. Ethics act as a guide to every individual in the workplace to ensure that they follow the prescribed methods when dealing with a certain issue. It is difficult to determine what is ethical or unethical due to the changing circumstances in different business environments as far as different cultures are concerned. Every culture has its set of values and beliefs, these beliefs and values differ hence causing an ethical dilemma. Ethics are important since they enable one to determine the right thing to do in a certain circumstance.
Mission/ Goals
I intend to be successful in life by following my career goals. After school, I plan to find a job where I can gain experience in managing people and the need for ethics in the firm. This will be crucial in my career since I plan to start a consultancy firm later in life. The company will provide ethical training to employees and help organizations develop ethical policies and guidelines in the workplace. I also intend to undertake further studies on ethics to ensure I understand fully the main concepts and theories of ethics to help me when making decisions. I hope to finish all my further studies in the next seven years to enable me to concentrate on achieving my objectives.
There are several personal goals that I have set, they include first, starting a family. I plan that after getting a job, I will start a family to ensure am a responsible person. The job will help me cater for the family and my daily expenses. The goal of having a family keeps me motivated since I know I need to work hard to ensure that I can support my family. The second goal is to ensure that my intended business venture is successful through market promotion and providing quality ethical consultancy services. The business venture is based on the market need for ethical advice and training.
Ethics definition
Various scholars have defined ethics differently hence, there is no universal definition of ethics. One of the applicable definitions is that ethics are the acceptable or prescribed moral conducts that help to govern individuals or groups conduct. The second definition is that ethics are the moral principles based on individual values and beliefs in the society (Cornelius, 2002). Ethics are different since they are based on a society culture.
Leadership
Leadership is the ability of a person to influence or encourage others to follow his or her ideas. It can also be defined as the ability to command influence on a group through authority. Leadership entails setting goals to be achieved, developing strategies for achieving the goals, and working together to achieve the set goals. For one to be a leader he or she needs certain traits or quality to manage or control people.
Service definition
Service is the supply of intangible goods to the certain customers based on their needs and expectations. Services are aimed at improving the consumer's experience by providing utility to the consumers through service. It is important to ensure that the services provided meet the market demand. This definition of service is appropriate since it provides the type of utility provided and the expectations of the consumers of the service in the market.
Character
Character can be defined as individual moral and mental qualities that determine how he or she behaves. Character defines one's behavior and interaction with others in the society. If one has a poor character, then his or her interaction with others will be limited due to his or her personality. An individual character determines his or her personality. The personal character is different from an individual competence, intelligence, or talent (Zgheib, 2015).
Pressing Ethical Issues
Work diversity entails having different employee culture and gender in the workplace. Many organizations have embraced work diversity to ensure that there is equal representation in the workplace as required by law (McLean & Yoder, 2005). Many countries have drafted registrations requiring employers to hire employees who have different cultural background or are underrepresented in the workforce. Firms that have embraced this strategy have benefited from work diversity since it enables innovation since the employees have different orientations and experiences. However, there are challenges in implementing work diversity since it leads to conflict in the workplace (Cornelius, 2002). The employees have different beliefs and values, which means that they have different ethics. The Human resource manager has to resolve this conflict to ensure that the workers attain their set goals or objectives to ensure organizational success.
The conflict in the workplace arises due to the assumption that all the workers have to conduct themselves based on the basic morals set by the company. Unethical behavior can affect the company performance and employees moral to work as a team. Managers have to deal with various issues in the workplace such as religious differences. Religious beliefs help in building an individual character and ethical behavior (Konrad, 2006). However, each religion has certain values beliefs and practices that differ with others, hence leading to ethical differences. Managers have to deal with this issue by developing ethical guidelines to be followed by the employees in the workplace (Weiss, 2009). Employees have to be encouraged to be professional when performing their work to minimize the level of conflict.
Problem
In the case study, Jenny is concerned about the funds mismanagement in her workplace. In addition, some of her co-workers are using county government materials for personal businesses. The third issue is that the new workplace hiring practices since the prospective candidates cheat to pass their exams. Furthermore, the applicants are selected before the before the test since they have friends in the county government. The final issue is that the department manager is not concerned about the issue and asks Jenney to be silent about the issue. Jenney is in an ethical dilemma since she has to determine if to leave her first employment job considering her career plan.
Input
In this step, Jenney needs to gather more information to enable her to solve her problems. She needs to understand the county government reporting procedures, corruption-reporting offices, and the effects of failing to report the issue. This will enable Jenney to make an informed choice or strategy.
Creation
Jenney should develop different set of decisions that she can take based on her gathered output. Ethical dilemmas require one to develop different strategies to help in finding the best solution for the problem (Weiss, 2009). She should consider if not quitting the job might affect her ability to get another job if corruption investigation body discovers the mismanagement of funds.
Choice
The next step is selecting an appropriate choice or choices to undertake (Zgheib, 2015). Jenney may be feeling trapped due to her loan obligation, however, she may risk not getting a job if it is discovered that she failed to take action despite the fact that she knew. She should report the fund mismanagement and the hiring malpractices to the relevant bodies for appropriate action.
Operation
The final step is developing appropriate strategies to implement the choice or choices selected (McLean & Yoder, 2005). Jenney should first report the issue to the top-management or anti-corruption body in the county government. If no appropriate actions are taken, she should quit her job since the ethical violation in the workplace may affect her career.
The ethical course has had a major impact in my life since I have understood the importance of ethical conduct in the workplace. In addition, I have learned various ways of dealing with ethical differences due to diversity.
References
Cornelius, N. (2002). Building workplace equality: Ethics, diversity and inclusion. London: Thomson Learning.
Konrad, A. M. (2006). Handbook of workplace diversity. London: Sage Publ.
McLean, D. J., & Yoder, D. G. (2005). Issues in recreation and leisure: Ethical decision making. Champaign: Human Kinetics.
Weiss, J. W. (2009). Business ethics: A stakeholders and issues management approach. Australia: South-Western Cengage Learning.
Zgheib, P. (2015). Business Ethics and Diversity in the Modern Workplace. Hershey: Business Science Reference, an imprint of IGI Global.
