Business conduct that is unethical

Unethical Corporate Activity and its Consequences

Unethical corporate activity costs a company’s or business’s reputation as well as earnings a lot of money. One of the most common causes of company failure is unethical behavior. This study focuses on five basic unethical business behavior problems. In this section, we will classify, explain, and provide specifics about how they occur, who the offenders are, and where these problems occur. Finally, we will consider any suggestions for resolving these unethical market practices (Crane & Matten, 2016). Some of the wrong issues we will discuss are a disregard of corporate policy, deliberate deception, unlawful conduct, failure to honor commitments, and violation of conscience.

Disregard of Corporate Policy

Disregard of corporate policy is our first finding in this research into the firm unethical behaviors. Many are the time that the company tries to avoid lawsuits and happy customers in a bid to keep the business profit ratios in check. Business has strong policies on illegal activities such as coercion and deception (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). It is some of these systems that keep customers coming back. However, many are the time that employees ignore these clearly set company policies all in a bid to earn an extra coin illegally. The employees are the primary perpetrators as they may from time to time say they are out of stock just because you refuse to bribe them for goods. These are often the result of long queues with particular customer service. The number of sales with no doubt reduce due to such misconduct this in the long run negatively affects business profits. One recommendation to prevent such misconduct is to terminate employment for such employees (Crane & Matten, 2016). The second way would be to encourage the customer to report any misconduct to the management. The management should ensure that company policy always adheres.

Deliberate Deception

Deliberate deception is no doubt a miss conduct. Many lazy employees are often found of calling in sick only because they do not feel like going to work on a particular day. In other instances, taking credit for efforts and work done by other colleagues is also deliberate deception (Crane & Matten, 2016). Lawsuits, especially in sales cases, increase thus a very damaging form of ethical misconduct. Intentional misconduct is evident in how it happens while the perpetrator may be a customer or an employee. A fact is business are often disrupted due to cases of deception which relates in a harsh working environment and the long run low business performance. The business is negatively affected when a good but deceptive employee fails to report to work on a critical day when their expertise is needed. When customers are, deceived lawsuits are likely to face the business (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). To avoid such cases due to deception, it is key to trustworthy employee persons in places such as sales (Shaw & Barry, 2015). It is also advisable that the human resource team hires not only based on skill and efficiency but also on the person’s ethical behavior.

Failure to Honor Commitments

Failure to honor commitments is another annoying misconduct. A good case would be being denied of a day off only because the boss forgot the agreed upon commitments. Failure to honor commitments especially on terms explicitly accepted by business persons results in future distrust and unwillingness to accept to any commitment in future (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). Some bosses often perpetuate this habit to deny some of the workers’ days off. Complaints of this kind are often spread around to other employees. As a result spreading distrust which is a bad thing for business as it directly affects the business goodwill. In this case, the best recommendation is for the managers to stop giving promises and commitments they are not in a position to keep.

Unlawful Conduct

Unlawful conduct is often passed in the form of unlicensed software as well as taking business stationeries home. Making business supplies for personal use in also criminal and failure for a company to look into such cases of theft are illegal. Passing of counterfeit software around is very costly due to the numerous lawsuits that are often brought about by the software companies whose goods are pirated. It is therefore recommended that the company does not in any way encourage theft as it is costly in the long run. Employees caught stealing should be fired.

Violation of Conscience

Many are the time employee’s conscience are put at trial. Violation of conscience is an aspect that many employees wish away (Shaw & Barry, 2015). An example would be a pharmacist who is forced to sell medicine with some defects to a customer or else lose their job. To keep the job, the pharmacist must violate their conscience which will, in the long run, affect the working environment. These affect the business since many of the knowledgeable customers will not come back again (Crane & Matten, 2016). The working conditions slowly drift into harsh conditions. The managers should ensure that they keep their employee’s conscience free to avoid negative job motivation. The company should often revise its policies to ensure the rarely affect the employee’s conscience.

References

Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2016). Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.

Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. (2015). Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Nelson Education.

Shaw, W. H., & Barry, V. (2015). Moral issues in business. Cengage Learning.