Ethics, International Factors, and Cross-Cultural Considerations for Successful Project Completion

Ethics, in business, refers to moral principles and standards that define acceptable behavior in the world of business. Ethical decisions foster trust among individuals and in business relationships. Recognizing ethical issues is important in the workplace. An ethical issue is an identifiable problem requiring a person or organization to choose from among several actions that may be evaluated as ethical or unethical. When you’re determining is a situation is ethical or not, there are three factors to take into consideration. Individual factors, organizational factors, and opportunity. Individual factors are sets of principles that describe what a person believes are the right way to behave. Organizational factors include the influence of managers, coworkers, and the work group. Opportunity is a set of conditions that punish unfavorable behavior or reward favorable behavior. “Target thrives on competing to win in the marketplace. We compete and negotiate actively, but always with integrity. Taking advantage of anyone by manipulating or concealing

The author Robert Solomon argues that ethics has to an integral part with regard to business management. He does not believe that business management must include unethical or illegal methods to be able to succeed. Solomon preaches that business management is not as simple as obtaining revenue. “Businesses need to abide by fair policies and their owners have to be ethical in dealing with their customers” (Shaw p. 37). The author acknowledges that while illegal practices in business management could bring positive results at first, eventually the business is bound to fail. This is why Solomon recommended eight important policies that can help businesses in integrating ethics into their operations.

Varying situational standards reflect the behaviors and actions of the parties involved. This topic relates directly to respect of anopther country 's customs and social standards. In relation to project management, a project manager should respect the situational standards of another country 's standard ethical behavior and adapt them to their personal ethics. It is in the best interest of the project manager to determine the proper ethical behavior that is required based on the parties involved in the project. This can be a difficult decision in most cases, especially when asked to do something that may be considered unethical in the United States, but ethical in another country. Reading about the varying social ethics and culture of another country may give valuable insight into how to respond to such situations, or respectfully communicating the situation with a manager or stakeholder to alleviate or prevent a possible unethical decision.

Project Prevention formally known as C.R.A.C.K, is a non-profit organization that offers current and former drug addicted men and women an incentive of $300 to commit to use a form of birth control, options include an IUD, oral contraceptives, Depo-Provera or agree to sterilization. Barbara Harris, which is the founder of Project Prevention, adopted four children from the same drug addicted women who could not take care of her children. Barbara Harris came up with the idea of the organization when she could not get legislation passes that would have mothers of drug addicted babies be forced to commit to long tern birth control. According to the Project Prevention website, the organization strives to reduce the social burden of these

From job-related experiences, when I am placed into situations with individuals who have different ethics from me, I cautiously take steps to determine ethical dilemmas choices without violating the rights or opinions of all involved. In addition, the experiences working with teams at work, have taught me to carefully view the opinions of others before entering into open disagreement over a given course of action. I strongly believe, apart from the ethical position,. an individual has his or her individual right to express their opinion. The results of my EAI, combined with my experiences throughout school and work, have educated me that all ethical decisions require cautious thought. I firmly believe, in order to achieve the best results, one needs to take numerous factors including but limited to culture, into consideration while also allowing for future implications of any action dictated by ethical decisions I make.

Drug addicts across the UK are being offered money to be sterilised by Project Prevention-an American charity.

Ethical standards in business are important for every leader to know and understand. The book Ethics 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know by: John C. Maxwell discusses ethics in the world today. When people make unethical choices, the reason they do because of three main pitfalls. People do what is most convenient to them, people tend to do what they must do to win, and people rationalize their choices with relativism. In this summary, Maxwell’s definition of business ethics will be framed, examples of ethical standards and guidelines, the meaning and contrast of ethical thinking and ethical behavior, and how to avoid these major pitfalls to live an ethical life. The

Supporting ethical conduct and decision making involves several different issues. Installing, a code of ethics would be a good way to start. Any company must have a proud business tradition, built on beliefs and values in which responsible, honorable teammates, working in an atmosphere of excellence, make sound business decisions. A company's reputation of trust and integrity of the results from teammate commitment should bring high professional standards, confidentiality, loyalty, and sensitivity to the needs and expectations of the people and the business it serves. Furthermore, the code should apply to all teammates. The code exists to provide teammates, and shareholders with a statement on how the company will conduct itself in the industry.

International business ethics challenges the corporate world to deal with questions of what to do in situations where ethical standards come into conflict as a result of the different cultural practices in the nation. Since, there is this dilemma that has progressively troubled the large multinational corporations, international business ethics has arisen to help address these adhesive subject matters. There are several international business ethics discussions on the question of how to act in the home country as opposed to the host country is at the central point of most international corporations. The argument in question is how companies should practice their business according

Personal values may conflict with ethical decision making if those personal values are different than the organizational norms of the business or institution. Constructing, and maintaining personal ethics in the workplace rests with the individual, and how willing he or she is in assimilating to the evolving cultural dynamic of the corporate world. Many times a person find their personal, cultural and/or organizational ethics conflicting and must reconcile a course of action that will mitigate cognitive dissonance. In order to be a productive member of society, in small groups and globally, one must reconcile these conflicts on a daily basis and continually move forward while maintaining personal integrity and

An important part of any successful business is the ability to develop and nurture a culture of teamwork. The third principal Caterpillar notates in its Code of Conduct is teamwork, in which they stress that they “know by working together, we can produce better results than any of us can achieve alone” (Caterpillar, 2005 p. 17). Caterpillar also uses the principal of teamwork to emphasis that the global and cultural diversity of their company is a competitive strength. In an enlightening approach to teamwork, Avshalon Adam and Dalia Rachman-Moore (2004), discuss how companies implement their ethical codes. They have

Ethics is an extremely relevant value in business and consulting. The presence of recognized ethics and/or ethical practices tends to diminish the need for informative or legal/contractual precautions in the formalization of relationships, for both of the parts involved in a

Regarding the code of ethics prescribed for the engineering profession, it can be said that the managers are likely to face an ethical dilemma in dealing with the clients across various countries. Different people have different choices and accordingly, their work culture also differs to a great extent. For instance, gender issue can be a major problem in engineering sector because of late; equal numbers of women are competing with the males in this profession (Fitzpatrick and Bronstein, 2006). This used to be a dominant profession for mostly males in the last

Leadership is by all means a special talent that not all people possess. A leader must also have ethics to be effective for the long term in the corporate world. These leaders generally implement ethical programs in order to influence an organizations climate (Yukl, 2010). I will evaluate the importance of ethical leadership and the role it plays into today’s organizations. In addition, I will discuss the repercussions a company may have when its leadership allows and even rewards unethical business practices. Lastly, I will apply my personal leadership perspective. My perspective will include the path-goal theory and ethical practices that I find important to

Business is a broad field, and there are many important characteristics that play a significant role in ensuring that business decisions are done correctly. Laws and regulations are made and enforced to make sure that corrects decisions are done. One of the main purposes of laws is to make sure that ethical principles are not broken. However, each situation is different and some times laws and ethics intertwined, and laws could cause people to act in unethical ways. Ethics could be defined as moral principles that guide an individual’s behavior. Ethics could be influenced by the person who is seeing it and by the culture in where the situation is taking place (McKay, Nitsch & Peters). A major guideline that could be used to evaluate if a situation is ethical is to determine if a situation is right or wrong.