Business ethics defines how a company integrates core values – such as honesty, trust, respect, and fairness – into its policies, practices, and decision-making. Business ethics is, in part, the attempt to think clearly and deeply about ethical issues in business and to arrive at conclusions that are supported by strongest possible arguments. Ethical principles are the rules of conduct that derive from ethical values. For example, honesty is a value that governs behavior in the form of principles such as: tell the truth, don’t deceive, and don’t cheat.
In a business the ultimate goal is to achieve maximum profits. There are factors affecting at different levels of the business such as finance, technology, labor, and workflow in order to maintain excellence and growth of the company. In this paper, I want to demonstrate what ethical issues I faced working as a team leader for my company and how I approached the problems in order to solve it and made decisions and solutions without disturbing the environment of the workplace.
Team leaders must master a broad range of business talents and also qualities such as team leadership, setting up weekly goals and must provide their organizations with the strategies, structures, and personnel to compete in a constantly changing environment. There can be a number of ethical dilemmas arising during the course of work. I just got promoted, as a team leader working with entirely new team members and handling altogether a new project was a challenge. The project was to build up an application on the server for a computer hardware company for creating invoices and recording all daily sales and purchase transactions.
After a close study of the project, I found that one of my members in the quality assurance department is presenting false test reports showed that everything is being tested in order to look better in the eyes of his superiors. Now this was a serious issue as I was responsible for the project done precisely and on time. I could not overlook my team member’s behavior, but was it right for me to report his actions to the director? False reports could cause serious issues and complications.
The project was going to be active in two week’s time frame and the testing was not yet done, and if there were any mistakes it would cost a high amount to the company and would also affect its reputation. I then met with the head of testing department to discuss his behavior. He said that his actions were like everyone else’s, but I did not find his argument compelling.
There were two options: I could send an honest report exposing the member’s fraudulent reporting, or I could falsify report myself, thus protecting his career. Neither option was acceptable. To buy more time, I convinced the company manager to give me an additional week before submitting my project. I ordered the quality assurance team to work overtime on the problems that were easiest to fix. I also had other team members who were not part of testing including myself under the guidance of a testing expert.
After a week of almost constant work by all the team members, there was still some work left tested. I sent an honest report to the manager and director documenting the state of the project. The manager did receive some harsh words from the company director, but nothing of great consequence. I had maintained my integrity and minimized damage to my fellow member. Although I still question the politeness of not exposing his negligence, but the decision I made allowed me to preserve the trust of my team. After the project was in action that member completed his task and I had no problems with his work in future.
Trustworthiness, respect, honesty, responsibility, fairness, and caring are some of the ethical concepts that guide our choices in order to make an ethical decision. The key to make effective decisions is to think about choices in terms of their ability to accomplish our most important goals. Reading the chapters has definitely changed my thoughts and has also helped me comprehend business ethics and management.