Ethics

Organizations that behave ethically are more apt to earn the trust of their customers, employees, and stockholders. Then there are companies that hide the true value of the company from possible investors, customers, employees, and the public at large showing a lack of ethically behavior. This does not all the time included just one company, but a group effort to hide, steal, and mislead everyone for personnel gains. Everyone that deals with any organization expects the upmost ethically behavior on all levels.

Ethics, ethical values, and social responsibility should all work in unison in a corporate business structure. These key traits are better defined as maintaining overall good business morals, obtaining employees who possess personal ethical values, and finally to behave ethically and with sensitivity toward social, cultural, economic and environmental issues. For a business to better ensure these quality business traits a code of ethics should be adopted by the business. In the cases of Bernie Madoff and Enron, the most well-known financial scandals in history, I feel, gave a major hand in pushing business all across America to have and enforce the code of ethics.

In Normative Ethics there are three distinct schools of thought, and each differentiate through moral intentions. Consequentialism relies on the consequences of an action in order to distinguish whether or not something is morally acceptable. Deontology considers the morality of an action by one’s reason for doing a certain deed. Lastly, virtue ethics bases morality off of virtuous character, and how a virtuous person would act given a certain predicament. Ultimately, consequentialism provides the most practical explanation for morality due to the notion of providing the best possible result. Contrarily, deontology and virtue ethics do not always provide an individual with the most sensible course of action, and therefore prove to be

Both key elements have an interactive relationship that helps in building profitable businesses, as well as a well-rounded community. Ethics refers to set of beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad. Therefore, Good ethical practice help build our business, as well as help our staff members to make ethical decisions. The decision of each official can affect the entire organization. Whereas, most people come from different background and culture which also plays a vital role in shaping their ethics. Business ethics involves the application of the issues in the workplace. While much unethical behavior is illegal, one important role of business ethics is to manage behavior that cannot be covered by government laws. The universal ethical standards, which involve respect, responsibility, and citizenship, are rules that apply to people and should be held high within the workplace. Social responsibility is the obligation of a business to contribute to society. The cheesecake restaurant social responsibility affects the environment, customers, investors, and our employees. (Bruning, 2014)

In May of 1968, the Ford Motor Company, based upon a recommendation by then vice-president Lee Iacocca, decided to introduce a subcompact car and produce it domestically.  In an effort to gain a large market share, the automobile was designed and developed on an accelerated schedule.  During the first few years sales of the Pinto were excellent, but there was trouble on the horizon.

Mayo Clinic’s work is well known for many specialties, ranked in the top ten for most of them, the biggest thing that this not – for – profit organization is concerned with is, the care and satisfaction of the patients they serve. Patients from all fifty states travel to the Mayo facilities for treatment because they hold their employee and facility standards to high ethical and moral standards. The motto of the patient comes first plays a big part in way the Mayo facilities operates on a daily basis. As we take a look at some of the

In the mid to late 1960’s American automobile manufacturing was being dominated by Japanese imports. These imports, smaller in size than the domestic vehicles at the time, offered an economical and dependable alternative to what American automobiles offered. In order to remain competitive with these Japanese imports Ford chief executive officer Lee Iacoca instructed the Ford manufacturing company to come up with a vehicle for the 1971 sales year to compete with these Japanese imports. The normal time for design and production for a new vehicle line is 43 months but Iacoca ordered the process to be reduced to 25 months in order to compete. The timeline was met but a rear-end impact study was not conducted until after the car was already on sales lots. Drawn to the relatively inexpensive price for a vehicle at the time, Lily Gray purchased a 1972 Ford Pinto. This is where the production flaw of the Pinto was first revealed. Gray was traveling with 13 year old Richard Grimshaw on the highway when she had to slow to avoid a broke down vehicle. Also trying to avoid the broke down vehicle a Ford Galaxy traveling at approximately 50 miles per hour rear ended the Pinto. Almost immediately the Pinto burst into flames, both passengers had severe burns on their bodies, and later Lily Gray would pass away as a result of the burns from the crash.

When deciding what will benefit society, we evaluate if our actions are ethical or unethical. If the action is ethical, we would be considered socially responsible. Likewise, if the action is deemed unethical, then we would be considered socially irresponsible. A company that is focused on good ethics would be a company with strong social responsibility.

The notion of ethics deals with people’s behaviors within a company. Social responsibility involves a company’s moral obligations and the manner in which the organization makes its decisions. Although ethics and social responsibility are similar on a conceptual basis, each has its own unique characteristics that express their differences and its independence of the other. Ethics and social responsibility have to be present and coincide with one another for a business to be ethically sound.

Option one was to use the Ford Capri’s tank design that sat above the rear axle in a safe location that was also utilized in Ford’s experimental safety vehicle that could withstand 60 mph rear end collisions (Class Handout). Option two called for reinforcement around the filler to prevent tearing, along with a tank shield that stopped punctures. Due to the Pinto’s short conception to production window the engineers were reluctant to go and tell Lee about the setback. One engineers response to being ask about telling Lee was, “Hell no. That person would have been fired. Safety wasn’t a popular subject around Ford in those days. Whenever a problem was raised that meant a delay on the pinto, Lee would chomp on his cigar, look out the window and say ‘Read the project objectives and get back to work” (Class Handout). The project objectives are a step-by-step plan for the model and in the Pinto’s case; safety was not mentioned once (Class Handout). This put the engineers in a very tough position because one of the main ethical responsibilities of an engineer is to protect the welfare of the

(Panza & Potthast, n.d.) Ethics is very important to a company’s success. Ethical behavior can bring benefits to a business. They can attract customers, which can lead to a boost in sales and profits. It can attract the right employees and increase productivity. It can also attract investors and keep the company’s share price high. Unethical behavior on the other hand can damage a company’s reputation and make it less appealing to stakeholders. It could also result in lower profits.

Unfortunately the vehicle had one major design fault, the vehicle fuel tank when hit by a moderate rear collision would rupture and incinerate the persons trapped inside which led to injury and death. After reviewing this case study, my assumption of the Ford Company acknowledges that they did not make the right business ethics decision of allowing the Pinto to be sold, the vehicle passed federal safety standards minimally. Although while other manufactures models underwent the same crash assessments and performed roughly the same which one can argue that this status quo is the norm.

The cases involving the explosion of Ford Pinto's due to a defective fuel system design led to the debate of many issues, most centering around the use by Ford of a cost-benefit analysis and the ethics surrounding its decision not to upgrade the fuel system based on this analysis.

Ethics involve an individual's moral judgments concerning what is right and/or wrong. Individuals or groups of people are responsible for making decisions in an organization (shaw, 2008). Decisions within the organization are always emanate from the company's culture. However, the decision to act ethically and morally requires an individual judgment. Thus, members of staff are obligated to make decisions that reflect their right course of action (shaw, 2008). This involves rejecting the option that could lead to the greatest short-term gain. The leadership of most organizations stresses the need to adopt ethical behaviors and corporate social responsibility. Ethical dealings can earn the organization various benefits. For instance, it may attract more clients to the business thus boosting sales; employees could be motivated to stay longer in the organization thereby reducing recruitment expenditures. Ethical behaviors could also earn the business a favorable reputation that could attract investors. Categorically, a lack of social responsibility or unethical behavior may hurt the firm's reputation and scare away investors. Sales and profits could fall in the process.

There are a lot of factors to think about as a mutual fund manager when deciding whether to invest in a company. When it comes to investing in Ford Motor Company, I will have to make a decision on whether the investment strategy and the associated risks will be a good fit for me and my company. Most