Business culture to support ethical decision making

One challenge to the development of a strong ethics program is to use the elements of the organization discussed in Module 6 to create a culture that supports ethical decision making. All of the elements need to support the behavior you want to create. This requires a holistic view of the systems and how they interact.

In this activity, you will locate and evaluate current ethics programs to provide a foundation for revising an existing ethics program. Considering what you have read in this course, begin investigating an organization’s ethics program by reviewing their website. You should select an organization of interest to you as a place in which you think you might like to work.

For your discussion:

• Use the EC Library to locate an article about the organization that addresses an issue associated with ethics.
• Choose the ethics theory most applicable to the issue in the article you chose.
• As a starting point for your investigation, review the organization’s documents and policies on their website. Many organizations have information on their ethics policies available. Identify current policy statement(s) and describe the current environment created by these policies.
• Indicate whether the organization has a clear ethics program or if it has only an espoused ethics policy.
• Identify at least two areas for improvement to create a strong ethical culture, based on the organization’s ethics program.

In responding to your classmates, share recommendations or ideas for helping the organization improve its ethical culture.

Post your primary response on the discussion board. Be sure to review your writing for grammar and spelling before posting. Read any postings already provided by your instructor or fellow students. See the SBT Discussion Rubric for how you will be evaluated for this activity. You are also expected to read the responses to your original posts, and if a classmate raises a question or an issue that warrants a response, you are expected to respond.

Your responses to the discussion questions should relate the assigned readings and viewings to the discussion topic and should not consist only of personal opinion. Your opinion is important to the discussion, but you should add connections to the material to support your views. Without a foundation in the literature, your opinion has little professional value. For example, “Based on Trevino and Nelson’s stance that cultural relativism creates an environment where unethical behavior is justified through the cultural discourse (year, P#), the discussion should center around…”. This type of statement allows you to connect your views to the literature. This is possible even when you are providing personal examples.

Use the subject line as an advanced organizer to allow your classmates and the instructor to have some idea of what your posting is about. For example, a subject line, “response to discussion question,” is not appropriate. Your responses to fellow students should contain substance, should be more than just opinion, and must go beyond a simple agreement or disagreement.

Compose your work using a word processor and save it, as a Plain Text or an .rtf, to your computer. When you’re ready to make your initial posting, please click on the “Create Thread” button and copy/paste the text from your document into the message field. Be sure to check your work and correct any spelling or grammatical errors before you post it.

Review the SBT Discussion Rubric located in the “Start Here” section of the course for more information on grading criteria.