Business Ethics Reflection Essay Example

Ethical people are the ones who know how to differentiate between the right and wrong and always ensuring that others see their moral conduct. In an organization, being honest, and having a good relationship with your coworkers and customers plays a significant role in ensuring a smooth running of an organization by gaining trust from your clients, employee's retention, and refraining from having legal issues that occur when one is untrustworthy in business. Maintaining excellent ethical behavior helps in creating a positive image in the marketplace, and this can bring in more customers through referrals.

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Good ethics also helps by providing a friendly working environment whereby employees work in a team as opposed to working individually and also ensuring there is fairness between them. Retention of employees is another factor brought about by good ethics whereby the employees are treated fairly and compensated where necessary, but when the employer does not care about the employees, they tend to look for greener pastures.

Leaders can influence their organization either positively or negatively depending on their integrity, trust, and leadership skills. When leaders have a strong commitment to ethical behavior, they strive to ensure all employees conduct themselves according to the high business standards. Then the company will tend to have a high confidence level in the market place. Leadership styles affect the employees in different areas like productivity, by engaging them in finding the best way to accomplish the organizations' strategic goals. Exercising teamwork creates a conducive working environment, and these types of leaders are referred to as participative leaders. Commanding leaders also affect the worker's morale by mostly making decisions without consulting the employees, and this ends up in decreasing the employee's retention and in turn lowers the productivity. Democratic leaders, on the other hand, are those who accept the input from their employees to make critical decisions and delegate responsibilities which, in turn, empowers the employees in decision-making thus creating a smooth running of the company.

Ethics and culture are mostly connected because the belief of a person will affect his behavior in an organization. Organizations employ different people from diverse cultural backgrounds, but leaders must ensure useful cultural values are adhered to because action speaks louder than words, they are supposed to act as role models to employees, and it's essential for a leader to lead by example to his/her subordinates. A strategic leader should implement structures such as orientation and training programs, performance management systems and policies that support ethics.

In my perspective, business ethics are the principles and values that govern the behavior and action of a person in an organization. For example honesty, integrity, loyalty, abiding with the Law, and fair treatment of other people are the fundamental principles that govern business ethics. My guidelines would mainly be treating all employees and stakeholders fairly and refraining from activities that might bring the conflict of interest from other companies. Another directive is maintaining a high level of confidentiality and ensuring respect for the company's properties. Other guidelines also include the provision of quality health care in an ethical manner, obeying the law by paying taxes and avoiding illegal activities such as fraud.

Conclusion

Ethics plays a significant role in an organization and generally determines the productivity of an organization. When one applies the principle of honesty and fairness both to customers and coworkers, the company can run smoothly and with minimal losses. If a leader treats his/her employees with respect, the same principle will be used to treat him and all customers in general.