Unethical Behavior Of Sales Agents

JP Morgan bundled subprime mortgages into securities and marketed them as for sale as investments. Investors that bought the securities being offered by JP Morgan because they thought they were relatively safe is what led to the housing bubble. When hundreds of thousands of homeowners defaulted on their mortgages because they could not afford to make their payment, the value of the securities plummeted leaving investors with huge losses. This conduct of bundling toxic loans into securities and misleading investors contributed to the financial crisis of 2008 (USDOJ, 2005). JP Morgan's unethical behavior left many families homeless and caused taxpayers billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts of the financial industry.

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 problem with unethical practices is that a company itself is not the only one will suffer from the consequence of its illegal actions. Most of the time, there are customers who get victimized by these unethical practices as they put their trust and loyalty on businesses that they have patronized for so long. At the end of the day, all they can do is file their complaints and vent out their frustrations over the betrayal they experienced from their trusted businesses, but the damage remains permanent. The once excellent relationships are forever destroyed and victimized customers always carry with them the trauma and fear that they could be fooled again in the future.

A multitude of factors influence unethical decision making and behaviors such as employment, dissatisfaction with wages and benefits, etc. In the case of Crestview, it is the organizational culture of getting the job done at any cost, which encourages disregard for ethical considerations in the interest of achieving outcomes (Holzer & Schwester, 2011).

Creating an adequate monitoring system not only protects the best interest of an organization but the consumer also. Furthermore, without these structured protections for the business and consumers, unethical behavior tends to flourish throughout an organization in several different forms. In the case of the Better Business Bureau, it appears that the proper protections were not in place to protect consumers or the organization should have updated its mission statement to account for the many consumer changes since the use of the internet globalized businesses. Furthermore, the leaders of BBB should have worked harder to ensure that employees and companies were punished for allowing his or her unethical behavior to tarnish the organization’s image.

In the business world companies will run into times that they have to make decision based on ethics. This outcome may not be illegal, but unethical, which is just as important when running a business. Business Ethics is the concept of distinguishing between right and wrong and then making the right choice. The right choice may not always be the easiest or best alternative for the organization financially, but it is the greatest option for the company and its shareholders overall. The idea of business ethics is important to create trust between consumers, the community, and others involved with a given organization.

In American consumer society, it is common knowledge that businessmen are rarely 100% truthful. Exaggerated advertisements, cheapened materials, and other similar practices have become part of business. The topic of debate, however, is whether this dishonesty in business is ethical. According to Albert Carr in the article “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?”, bluffing is morally acceptable within the parameters of doing business.

Business Ethics is a set of moral principles applied in the commercial world. Business ethics provide guidelines for acceptable behavior by organizations in both their strategy formulation and day-to-day operations. An ethical approach is becoming necessary both for corporate success and a positive corporate image. Following pressure from

Ethical behavior is behavior that a person considers to be appropriate. A person’s moral principals are shaped from birth, and developed overtime throughout the person’s life. There are many factors that can influence what a person believes whats is right, or what is wrong. Some factors are a person’s family, religious beliefs, culture, and experiences. In business it is of great importance for an employee to understand how to act ethically to prevent a company from being sued, and receiving criticism from the public while bringing in profits for the company. (Mallor, Barnes, Bowers, & Langvardt, 2010) Business ethics is when ethical behavior is applied in an business environment, or by a business. There are many

(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.

Finally he may have even thought that Bryan would be easily influenced by thinking no one would find out with him using the method that he did to get the clock to him.

Is bluffing in business ethical? I feel that the answer to this question will differ depending on who you ask. If you ask an executive in a major company a question of that sort, they might say that from time to time you have to be deceitful in order to keep the company or business afloat and running properly. That means if you have to deceive the customer, dealer, labor union, or other departments in your organization when negotiating with any of them then it will all be for a good cause. As Albert Carr states, bluffing in business is a “game” and you have to treat it as such in order to thrive. I am not going to be naïve when talking about this matter. Because I know that if most managers, CEO’s, and supervisors did not bluff every now and then, that most opportunities would be missed and the company most likely would lose some sort of competitive edge in the business world. This “game” is played from the bottom levels of corporate America all the way to the top. I do not think that bluffing in business is ethical; however I understand that it is inevitable in a society that bluffs all the time in any given situation. Most people compare this concept of bluffing to that used in the game of poker. In poker, the winner is the person who has the steady skills in the long run. You have to know every aspect of the rules, be aware of the mindsets and psychology of the people you’re playing with, be disciplined, and respond almost automatically to the opportunities that are

Every organization also has a profession responsibility to conduct business honestly and ethically. Our readings reported, “Experts estimated that U.S. companies lose about $600 billion a year from unethical and criminal behavior” Kinicki and Kreitner (2009). The organization could avoid having ethical issues by meeting the

To fully understand the nature of the question posed one must know the meaning of ethics. Webster’s dictionary defines ethics as the philosophical study of the moral value of human conduct and of the rules and principles that ought to govern it; moral philosophy, the moral fitness of a decision, course of action, etc. Basically, I believe ethics is how one makes a decision according to the social norm that surrounds him. The social norm includes not only the culture but the laws and standard procedures of the environment. These laws and norms must be fully understood before one can understand the ethical significance of one’s decision.

Process-orientated framework, analyzing ethical problems in terms of the categories used by marketing specialists; Research, price, promotion, placement Specific issues in marketing ethics: