Ethical Dilemmas: A Common Scenario - How to Handle Quickly? - Essay Sample

Introduction

Ethical dilemmas are issues concerning critical decision-making processes in an organization, where a particular group of stakeholders such as management, employees, or suppliers may be compelled to make specific judgments based on the question of moral and organizational policies. Meanwhile, studies indicate that occurrences of the ethical dilemma are a typical scenario that neither employees nor employers should be scared of, because the most critical aspect, is how fast the situation is resolved, and the best moral decision made. Examples of ethical issues include unethical leadership and making unrealistic or conflicting goals (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2016). Apple Inc. is a large multinational industry in the United States of America, that majors in the production or computing devices and accessories, including but not limited to phones, laptops, computers, headphones. In the year 2006, Apple company faced a tremendous ethical dilemma between the Human Resource Management department and its suppliers. Having noted that the organization majors in the production of computing accessories, it is imperative that it similarly must have its suppliers of the raw materials to facilitate its operations.

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In specific, the vision of Apple Inc. was always to become a low-cost production unit so that its customers could enjoy the products at relatively low prices, and by doing so, it could gain a sustainable competitive advantage (Linzmayer, 2004). Meanwhile, the organization realized that raw materials by the internal suppliers were so expensive that they decided to privately use external providers from China and Japan to outsource them at lower prices, to help them in achieving their organizational goal. In the process, the company had to choose between keeping the agreed terms and policies of contract by its suppliers or to go for the cheaper products to achieve its goal. These are moral complications in an organization that requires an evidence-based approach to make the most accurate decisions.

Need for Applying Organizational Policies to Solve the Issue

To solve this dilemma, there was a great need to apply organizational policies. These policies, guidelines, or procedures can help to make suppliers understand the views and values of the organization. Policies are also beneficial because they may provide a standard process of engaging in a particular issue so that the outcome is achieved, while the impacts are significantly limited (Weiss, 2008). Similarly, Apple could use these policies to make its suppliers understand that its primary goal is to create a low-cost production firm, and the high prices of their raw materials was a hindering factor towards the achievement of this success. If such policies are not implemented, then suppliers could decide to legal actions by presenting the case in the court of law, a fact that would surely deteriorate the company's resources as compensation to the dealers for failing to abide by the agreement terms.

Current Relevance of the Ethical Issue

The relevance of this issue is to depict how agreement terms in an organization are essential, and any decisions to go against it must be made in a procedural manner using the existing policies to reinitiate or restructure overall organizational activities and operations. Perhaps, concern about this ethical dilemma helped the company further to make an imperative judgement between right and wrong. Therefore, future suppliers were confident that their rights would be established, as the company had understood the importance of using organizational policies, from the incidence. Violation of rights as an ethical element can also make a company to realize the benefits of engaging in corporate social responsibilities, before making judgmental decisions that affect a specific group of its stakeholders. The issue does not appear in the media spotlight because it was resolved, and internal suppliers assigned back their contracts.

Importance of Resolving the Ethical Dilemma

The primary reason for solving this issue was to avoid the negative international reputation of the company’s brand. In 2006, Apple Inc. was stressing on the various methods to expand and dominate the market, that negative reputation could severely diminish its goals (Linzmayer, 2004). Moreover, most customers often use ethics to gain confidence and trust in a particular company. Ethical challenges must, therefore, be addressed as soon as they occur because their impacts can be slow but so detrimental, especially on the side of customers (Weiss, 2008). Key competitors like Microsoft could also use the mess as an advantage to improve their brand and gain more dominance. To solve this dilemma, the company applied the principle of idealism, to obtain ideas and make a moral-guided decision. Other applicable principles to resolve such difficulties include the policies of intuition and utilitarianism, which both result in moral implications (Weiss, 2008).

References

Linzmayer, O. W. (2004). Apple confidential 2.0: The definitive history of the world's most colorful company. No starch press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=mXnw5tM8QRwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=Apple.+Inc+company+2004+problem+with+suppliers&ots=PzMndZ5nXG&sig=V6XvFY-N5wudp0uP5N63UGSSvco

Shapiro, J. P., & Stefkovich, J. A. (2016). Ethical leadership and decision making in education: Applying theoretical perspectives to complex dilemmas. Routledge. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4L5YCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=the+ethical+dilemma+in+Apple+Inc.+in+2006&ots=aXaSCyS1Uw&sig=b4JC1dUsulnLA9KV-Z0BKADmsD8

Weiss, J. (2008). Business ethics: A stakeholder and issues management approach. Cengage Learning. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=kSNkvFv1OYAC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=the+ethical+dilemma+in+Apple+Inc.+in+2006&ots=bTuql-qjYo&sig=RjGMhcZE27uTs4CM21pNx2JEqMU