WEEK TWO: MANAGEMENT ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
By the end of this week, students will be familiar with issues concerning ethics and social
responsibility. This will include:
• Issues concerning your personal ethics
• Setting ethical standards
• Frameworks for the consideration of ethical decision making
• Issues concerning social responsibilities
• Review of ethics and social responsibility within an organisation’s cultural context.
REQUIRED READING
Samson, Danny, Donnet, Timothy & Daft, Richard L, 2018, Management, 6th Asia-Pacific
edition, Australia, Cengage Learning. Chapter 5.
or
Samson, D & Daft, R. L, 2015, Management, 5th Asia Pacific Edition, Australia Cengage
Learning. Chapter 5.
RECOMMENDED READING
Trevino, L K & Nelson, K A, 2011, Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk About How
To Do It Right, 5th Edition, Chapter 5, John Wiley & Sons, USA. pp. 292–319.
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INDEPENDENT LEARNING TASK 2
One key factor in this week’s study is an analysis of an individual’s specific personality
and behaviour traits and how this may influence their communication skills in the
workplace. Within the Study Guide, you will discover that these traits are divided into
three levels. The third level is called post-conventional and these individuals are
described as following their own set of principles of justice and rights. They are aware
that people hold different values and they seek creative solutions to ethical dilemmas.
They demonstrate a balanced concern for individuals and for the common good.
Think back through your work or life experiences and name an individual who fits this set
of traits and write a short piece (100 – 200 words) on why you have chosen them.
Post your response to the Discussion Board and comment on the work of your
peers under the thread heading ‘Post responses to ILT2 here’.
Module 1
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2.1 YOUR OWN ETHICS
What does it take to grow good flowers, fruit and vegetables? It takes good soil, and that’s what
a manager tries to create by being sensitive, nurturing, and trying to bring out the best in people.
(Grosman qtd in Samson & Daft 2012, p.19)
Today, you will hear CEOs taking about the triple bottom line. It is one of those much-heard
catchphrases that may have lost meaning through overuse. Yet it is an important facet of any
progressive business environment.
It involves the development of reporting mechanisms that measure performance from three
perspectives: economic, social and environmental. Progressive managers are required to not only look
to the organisation’s specific product and its production costs, growth and profit, but to their
organisation’s ethical and social and environmental responsibilities. To use another, perhaps
hackneyed, term – organisations are expected to be good corporate citizens.
The notion that organisations may be held accountable for their ethical, social and environmental
responsibilities represents a major point of change from traditional, more mechanistic models. Certainly,
it would have been laughable fifty years ago to hold a company liable for things like pulling out
mangroves and destroying fish habitats at a local level or, indeed, global warming on a planetary level.
Oil spills, coal dust and asbestos issues were never considered as the responsibility of businesses –
except by a very small percentage of the population who were mostly considered eccentric. They were
just things that happened. Such destructive and wasteful environmental fallout was an accepted
consequence of the expansion of business production.
The world has changed. Web 2.0, social media and 24 hour global news cycles have given the public
an opportunity to hear and see social and environmental events live to air and, more importantly, see
and hear them over and over again. Additionally, we are all better educated and more articulate
thanmany of our forebears. This brings with it an ability to seek out real information and deconstruct the
spin that surrounds events and misadventure that only adds to the cynicism about the motives of
corporations.
Worldwide movements like Occupy Wall Street and its many offshoots highlight this unrest and
disappointment with the corporate world’s failure to meet their ethical and social responsibilit ies and it
is not particularly difficult to proffer compelling evidence to these failures. It surrounds us all in the media
every day.
Yet that is not the full story.
Many managers today seek to embrace change and, though they may not be aware of it, sit comfortably
within Ghandi’s philosophy of ‘be the change you want to see’.
This week’s study is about putting aside negatives such as conspicuous corporate greed, exploitation
of third world counties on a global level and the rise of fixed contracts and casualization on a local level.
We will be looking at how managers can integrate sound ethical and social responsibilities into their
systems and processes, and how they may use communication techniques to deliver fairer outcomes
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– internally and externally, locally and globally. Some fairer outcomes might include resolving equity
issues within a workplace internally; being a good corporate citizen and meeting community needs
externally; being environmentally responsible locally and making an effort to cut greenhouse gas
emissions globally.
REALITY CHECK. Follow this link to YouTube. This excellent, short discussion successfully defines
business ethics and social responsibility.