Ethical and Unethical Issues in various Disciplines of Management

The terms ‘ethics’ and ‘business ethics’ are two different aspects.

ETHICS : Ethics is a branch of philosophy which is concerned with human character and conduct. Under the study of ethics, we consider what things are good or bad and about what actions are right and wrong.

BUSINESS ETHICS: Business ethics is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that arise in a business environment.

It is optional for an organisation to be ethical because it only relates with the moral values. Ethics play a vital role in each and every phase of the business like

production
Human Resource
Finance
Marketing
Research

1. ETHICS IN PRODUCTION :

Ethics are needed in production to ensure that the production function or activities are not damaging to the consumers or the society.

Ethical Issues in Production : Nowadays it is very difficult for an organisation to survive in the competitive market. It can make its place by adopting ethics as it adds to the reputation. Following are the ethical issues in production:

Good quality products attract large volume of customers.
It increase the faith and loyalty of customers.
It increases the sale of that product.
The increased sales raise the profit margin of the company.

Unethical Issues of Production : One of the most important characteristics of the business is that there is a great degree of interdependence between various business functions. In order to survive in the competitive sphere organisations, some organisations try to reduce their cost involved in production processes. It ultimately leads to harmful consequences. Following are some factors of unethical practices of the production:

Technological advancements like genetically modified food, radiations from mobile phones, etc.
Defective services and products like alcohol, tobacco, fast motor vehicles, chemical manufacturing, etc.
Production also increases pollution, global warming, water toxicity and depletes natural resources.

2. ETHICS IN HUMAN RESOURCE :

Human Resource means the collection of people and their characteristics at work. Human Resource Management is a management function that helps managers to manage the employees of the organisation.

Ethical Issues in Human Resource : The operations of an organisation depend upon the Human Resource like production, marketing, management, etc. An employee has to follow personal and professional ethics to set up good image. Then these ethics are set as the standards to be followed by other employees.

Following are the ethical issues faced by HR:

Employment issues
Cash and incentive plans
Employees discrimination
Performance appraisal
Privacy
Safety and health

Unethical Issues in Hunan Resource : Some employees behave unethically which brings loss to the organisation. These kind of employees are punished and penalised so that other employees couldn’t do that. Some of the unethical issues in HR are:

Misusing company time
Abusive behaviour
Employee theft
Lying to employees
Violating company interest policies.

3. FINANCE :

Finance refers to the management of large amounts of money. It is also known as ‘art of money management.’

Ethical Issues in Finance : Finance mangers are often confronted with ethical issues like:

Full disclosure and transparency
Professional duty vs company demands
Individual judgements vs demand from clients
Accuracy
Timeliness

Unethical Issues in Finance : Following are some unethical issues of finance:

Delays in payments to vendors and dealers.
Delays in paying wages, interest to financiers, incentives and bonus to employees.
Opening of current accounts in different banks to avoid adjustments against loans by earlier banker.
Taking private finance from only those who are ready to do personal favours to finance department head.

4. MARKETING :

Marketing means the action of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.

Ethical Issues in Marketing : Each marketing concept has its own ethical issues which are mentioned below:

Delivery channels
Deceptive marketing policies and ethics
Pricing ethics
Anti-competitive practices
Ethics in advertising and promotion.

Unethical Issues in Marketing : Unethical marketing practices tend the organisation to lose faith and loyalty of customers and the profitability falls down. The worst practices of the marketing are: