Business Ethics

 Business Ethics

Business ethics refers to the application of values associated with ethics to the business behavior.  Notably, to be able to understand the implementation of good ethical practices in organizations employees and managers need to familiarize themselves with different types of ethical issues, which face businesses today. The paper will discuss ethical issues that are not trending and the associated challenges.

Social Networking

Social media sites are the most used network sites. Despite being unable to curb social networking, many problems may arise from workers accessing websites such as Twitter and Facebook (Bernstein, 2016). Remarkably, these may greatly involve potential confidentiality breach, misuse of company resources and time, conflict of interest, damage to the reputation of the company, and disclosure of the private information. Organizations can address the issue through the creation of policies, which show clearly the appropriate use of social media and the expectations of how these sites can be utilized professionally in order to meet their objectives in the organization.

Surveillance and Privacy

Bearing in mind the high rise of technology surveillance, businesses greatly face the balancing challenge of individual employee privacy in the protection of the health of the companies they work in (Bernstein, 2016). The employers need this technology implemented for many reasons, which include limiting legal liabilities, recovering lost communications, ensuring that workers adhere to the policies of the company and protecting sensitive information. However, these aspects come at the expense of relinquishing individuals’ privacy. The problem can be solved by encouraging employee participation in the policies, writing the policies, and offering complete disclosure on the tools and methods involved in the surveillance use of technology.

Transparency

Sometimes earlier, transparency simply meant owning a mistake. As these practices remain to be important, the transparency concept has now expanded. Its meaning has grown to refer to the act of being forthright in every aspect both negative and positive in the practices of a company (Bernstein, 2016). In order to ensure transparency in companies, the leaders should emphasize of the practice of transparency in all facets of their activities and operations, which include internal culture, employee conduct, and corporate objectives.

Child Labor

Despite numerous corporations trying to handle and eliminate the issues or challenges of child labor, these defilements still persevere in some companies. Remarkably, this in particular occurs in large enterprises where the leaders are usually far removed and distanced from the manufacturing and production process and several related ground-level operations. Businesses are associated with willful ignorance as they only handle issues and challenges when they arise and fix them as an alternative of undertaking proactive approaches (Bernstein, 2016).  In order to battle this challenge, it is advisable for companies to be committed both to the public and private policies associated with child labor.

Environment Protection

The basic reputation of big organizations participating in ecologically sustainable applies is common understanding and knowledge. Organizations should equalize their goal to gain profits with adopting to processes and operation that are maintainable. The main areas they should observe include poisonous wastes, pollution, nuclear and chemical tumbles, deforestation, and global warming contributions. Companies seeking to solve these issues should establish alternative generation of energy, express corporate responsibilities to the public and their partners, and participate in cost-benefit studies or analysis on the protection of the environment (Bernstein, 2016).

In conclusion, answers to business ethics depend on how companies conduct themselves. The employees and the managers have to exhibit moral values and the executives should understand what is expected of them as leaders. Since the importance of business ethics may not be downgraded in the current business world, organizations need to be encouraged to embrace ethical practices.

References

Bernstein, R. (2016). 5 Current ethical issues in business. Business Ethics. Retrieved from https://online.shorter.edu/business/current-ethical-issues-in-business/