As a matter of fact, each and every institution has a code of conduct or rather a set of moral conduct which is used to guide the morals of the workers and it should be adhered to by both the employees as well as the top management officials. Admittedly, most workers have fallen victims of immorality due to their ignorance of the code of conduct. Others find themselves in moral dilemmas that put them in really awkward positions (Blanchard, & Peale, 2000). In this context, moral dilemma is a complex situation that involves a conflict that is usually very hard to solve. such conflicts occur in situations where doing what is morally wrong leads to immediate pleasing results whereas doing what is morally right results to immediate unpleasant results, however, it is impossible to take both actions to solve the conflict (Marianne, 2005).
Recently, I was confronted with a moral dilemma in my management profession where I was torn in between choosing to follow the code of conduct and favors from my boss. As a human resource manager in my company, I was assigned the duty of recruiting new accountants. As we all know, every organization has a code of conduct to guide their legal activities. Consequently, I had all it took to recruit new accountants. Unexpectedly, my boss came to me before the recruitment activity and lured me to hire his friends. Unquestionably, the issue I had at hand was so notorious and I had to give it a careful thought before rushing into making unwise decisions.
Nepotism is the name of the evil that was heavily dominating my work place. Everyone starting from the chief executive officer down to the supervisors are either related or friends. Now, I was put in a position to either choose to bury the evil or nurture it as it had been a tradition of that company. In this case, I had to evaluate my ethics. Besides the code of ethics that existed in our company, I had my own principles, responsibilities and integrity that guided my life. My boss promised to reward me handsomely once I employ his friends. This wasn’t easy for me because I had the option of employing my boss’ friends and at the end lose nothing but gain even more from my boss’ bribe.
Notably, it is very difficult to make morally good decisions, and most of all, because of the fact that we don’t live in a vacuum. I paid close attention to the existing rules and used my critical thinking skills that involved some intellectual traits that I needed in order to think independently and accurately so as to make a moral decision. Unfortunately these intellectual traits which involve clarity, accuracy, consistency, logic and depth were not covered in our code of conduct in any detail (Blanchard, & Peale, 2000).
When the big day of interview came, I gave myself a clear mind and did what I had to do. I went through their documents one after another and had a personal interview with each one or the applicants. After all was done, I remained to solely make the final decision. As a matter of fact, my boss’ friends were not even close to the qualifications we needed in the accountant we were looking for. Luckily, there were three applicants who had qualified for the post. One gentleman had higher qualifications while the other two who were a man and a lady were equally qualified. To avoid unfairness, I used the Gender Equality Act to solve the small dilemma I had at hand and therefore, I hired the lady so that we could have one gentleman and one lady (Marianne, 2005).
Admittedly, the decision I chose wasn’t easy at all but as a professional, I had to guard my dignity with honesty, integrity and openness in my everyday duties at work. I closed my eyes to bribery and risked losing my job as well as a friend so as to be fair to the public I was serving. The other reason for my decision was because I had an obligation to sincerely adhere to our organizational code of conduct
At first my boss was furious with me and I lost a friend in him but I was still proud of my work. Surprisingly, the accountants I had hired worked so well and took our company to levels we had never been. My boss and colleagues were so proud of the work I had done. I told them it was all because of the good code of conduct that I simply followed. Gladly I planted seeds precisely the seeds of honesty, sincerity and fairness that since then are being exercised.
Conclusively, moral issues in general deal with creation of decisions and choices. Mostly, business organizations spent time setting the ethics and code of conduct the manager’s individuals in the workforce. However, people in the organization are faced with challenging options in making decisions, hence giving rise to ethical dilemma (Blanchard, & Peale, 2000). Actually, some of the ethical conflicting issues include social conflict of goals, personal characters failure, and production of superior and accepted output. Some of the models that help in solving the ethical dilemmas in organizations include the Blanchard model, the Peale and Nash model.
References
Blanchard, K., & Peale, N. (2000). The Power of Ethical Management. New York: William
Morrow and Company, Inc.
Marianne, M. (2005). Business: Its Legal, Ethical, and Global Environment. Boston: Cengage
Learning.
