ACCOUNTING AND BUSINESS MORAL AND ETHICAL DILEMMAS

These set of procedures was defined as ethics. These frameworks are universally agreed within organization and between organizations and legislative bodies. To uphold integrity within organizations and society, ethics have come in articulating is socially acceptable. Organizational environments are flooded with situations that need a rational decision between what is good or bad. Individuals have personal goals while organizations have their own set of principles that help define behaviors of their employees. They govern judgements of either praise or blame depending on decisions arrived at. Business ethics are set of principles, norms, and standards of a business practice that are socially accepted in the society. Ethics define what is accepted or unaccepted within an organizational, national and global setup (Trevino & Nelson, 2016).

They advocate for virtues and not vices within operations. These virtues include loyalty, integrity, honor, accountability, reliability, loyalty among others. A good character isn’t justified enough to quality decisions among employees of an organization. According to Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, people are ethical when they don’t opportunistically use other individuals for personal gains. Besides, he added that being ethical is not when people don’t use hypocritical schemes to achieve high level of conduct. The next societal goal is to maximize net social benefits to all individuals within a society. Goals of a business are not essentially to maximize on profits but rather to contribute to the general well-being of a society (Brooks & Dunn, 2011). Organizational set of ethical code reflect on cultures within them hence definition from wider publics.

Ethics help a business enterprise to create a favorable climate to foster a sustainable growth and success. Organizational ethics are beyond illegal practices to incorporate other frameworks of code of conduct that govern employees to reduce risks of unlawful behaviors. Approaches integrating integrity combine concerns of adherence to the law and an emphasis on ethical behavior by management. Integrity based ethical behavior definitions are geared towards defining companies guiding values, targets and managerial strategies that help to attain good corporate image while maintaining powerful human reactions on moral decisions and actions. Some faults in ethics in the organization result to adverse effects. Areas of focus to sustainable growth include environmental pollution control. Activities such as transport, production and use of products for instance cars have impacts to the society.

Ethics help to asses industrial and social developments based on organizational activities (Crane & Matten, 2016). Based on the triple bottom line approach, businesses are not entitled to economic goal only but the integration of economic and societal goals. Law is an institutionalized set of ethics into specific rules, regulations or guidelines. Further, it can be defined as minimum acceptable standards of behaviors in the society. It identifies deviant actions on ethics that are legally punishable. Ethics are dominant over law as it covers ethical standards and issues which law doesn’t cater for (Crane & Matten, 2016). At times law and ethics confront each other but ethics are widely accepted within the society. Furthermore, for situation to qualify to be a dilemma it should have alternative choices to choose from.

For instance, deciding whether embezzling organizational fund is not a dilemma because ethically one knows it is wrong. A dilemma can come in a scenario of test of loyalty. For instance, reporting your best friend to management either for vice done to loyalty of your organization. Besides, the decision arrived at should be in a position to compromise ethical principles within the society. For instance, a company’s manager may lie concerning an issue in the organization to maintain a good reputation. On the contra, some part of the management may insist on telling the truth. Besides these two, another moral rule; categorical imperative provides a framework of decision making. It stipulates that one should act in a manner that his or her action where to be universal laws of nature.

It compels one to make judgements whether their actions can universally be accepted. Deceptive selling is aimed at stimulating buyers to act in a manner that the seller thinks won’t do if the truth was disclosed. In this case, the seller gains at the expense of the buyer. Through these dubious means, organization violates the Golden Rule. To attain good decision making process and sustaining ethical environment within organizations, “Hippocratic Oath for Mangers” has laid a set of principles to help managers make ethical decisions. It states that managers should be of service both to the public and society therefore they should create sustainable value for society in long run (Brooks & Dunn, 2011). These impacts are varied from consumer patterns to legal proceedings.

Legislative bodies have enacted new civil and criminal offenses, penalties application and increased support on law enforcement. Organizations have developed corporate ethic programs to detect and curb violations of the law. On the opposite, legislative bodies have developed sanctions such as fines and probations on organizations that violate set requirements. Fines charged on enterprises depend on the size of crime committed (Crane Andrew, Matten, & Crane , 2016). To ensure that all companies observe and adhere towards environmental conservation, Environmental Protection Policy (EPA) was enacted. This body is meant to scrutinize organizational processes, products, and their impacts to the society. It checks whether an organization is ethically observing the well-being of the general public. Volkswagen Emission Scandal The Volkswagen emission scandal came into being on September 2015 after EPA had issued a notice on violation of Clean Air Act in the United States.

It was observed that the company intentionally designed turbocharged direct injection (TDI) diesel engines in the laboratory test on emission testing. He claimed their company was dishonest with EPA and the California Air Resources Board. Besides, Michael said those who fitted their cars with this software acted criminally and needed to be held accountable at personal levels (Clifford, 2018) EPA body has the capability of imposing a fine of up to $ 37,500 to a single car on a company that has violated its set standards. This cost his extremely highly for any organization meaning a tremendous negative effect. The company in the current year made a significance loss. Decisive decision on dominated the market with effective cars through systemized gadgets resulted to adverse effect.

Furthermore, Volkswagen CEO, Martin Winterkorn apologized at a personal level. According to corporate fines under federal sentencing guidelines, capabilities of convictions are based on the size of the crime. At some incidences, the magnitudes of crimes are beyond the control of CEO’s. In such scenarios, the most important thing is to report the case, accept responsibility to the crime, and cooperating with authorities. Organization leaders are personally entitled to actions they advocate within their organizations. Fines imposed on organizations are based on the extent in which management has taken action. Integrity-based approach is concerned with managerial responsibilities to ethical behaviors to attain requirements of the law. This manager should have accepted the problem first and apologize rather than being harsh.

The organization should employ harsh disciplinary measures to behind the scandal. The Golden Rule in this case should come in to ensure a considerable decision on what direction to take concerning those involved. They should not aim profiting enterprises at the expense of the society. Volkswagen Company decision was aimed at creating a sustainable public image that would in return bring in profit maximization. This company withholds information concerning its cars by designing systems that show zero results on carbon emission. It is concerned with profit maximization through a reputable image. The company had consent on how deceptive the system was and how it would manipulate results. Reputation of the company was destroyed by this unethical decision resulting to negative effects on the organization in the long run.

While Volkswagen claimed to support ethics and sustainability, how can they recover from this ethical disaster? The company should generate new alternatives to curb the crisis. Volkswagen should come up with new strategies to foster a sustainable growth. It come up with creative responses to that will help their cars adheres to environmental policies. Strategies arrived at by the company, should be approved by EPA. A crisis is a low probability event to happen but has high impacts embedded to it and threatens stability of an organization. Crises have tremendous effects that affect an organization negatively. Organizational leaders have a perception that it has limited possibilities of occurrence. To achieve a significance control of a crisis an organization should adopt the Crisis Management Team (CMT) and Creativity Inclusivity approaches.

This company should have a crisis management team that would handle the crisis in case of occurrence. Do you believe this scandal will lead to tougher scrutiny of companies environmental claims in the future? Why or Why not? This scandal will bring forth tough scrutiny of business operations to assess their impacts on the environment. The scandal has created awareness on how organizations use dubious means to create a perception of compliance to environmental policies. Environmental Policy Agency has been provided with knowledge on unethical behaviors that are hidden within organizations. The scandal will be a frame of reference when making adjustments on scrutiny processes and fines to enact on violations of the stipulated ethics. Volkswagen designed systems that are similar to EPA systems whereby if experimentation was conducted, results recorded at any scenario depicted the company’s cars were compliant to minimal carbon dioxide emission.

These teams facilitate collaboration between organization and its publics. They build trust customer-organizational trust therefore regain on sustainable economic growth. Collaborations help to restore an organizations reputation after a crisis. The company should employ adaptive leadership whereby they use the current situation to reconstruct the economic situation). Volkswagen Company should try to adapt to the environment through confrontation of brand loyalty to goals of setting legacy. Choices should be geared towards sustainable economic and societal growth. Decisions should focus on long term effects on the business rather than short term goals. Organizations should not arrive at decisions that benefit themselves at the expense of the society. A breach of code of conduct within organization result to crises within organizations of affect.