Ethical Issues and Dilemmas in Business

Introduction

The ever growing competition in the field of business forces businessmen to take unethical decisions. These unethical decisions are either taken purposely or out of dilemma. These decisions are also sometimes taken because of ignorance; the managers tend to ignore the interest of several people who will inevitably suffer because of their decision. This paper will focus on ethical issues and dilemmas in business, a comprehensive analysis of developing an effective ethical program will also be provided in this paper.

“In today’s business, the workforce comprises of people who are diverse in their nationality, religion, caste, race, age, education and even socioeconomic status. They are all expected to work together as a team towards the success of the organization. “(How to resolve ethical dilemmas in business). Dilemmas are inevitable when it comes to various issues like downsizing, pollution control etc. These issues are bound to arise because of the competition these days, a successful manager must know how to cope with such issues and such issues should not disturb the working pattern of the business.

There are several other issues where this problem arises, for instance discrimination at the workplace and employee rights. Ethical issues are inevitable when such activities take place at the workplace. “To make an ethical decision, a person must recognize that there is an ethical situation at hand. So the first step in understanding business ethics is to create ethical issues awareness.” (Emerging Business Ethics Issues). For instance, if a manager finds discrimination at the workplace, the manager has to take a stand to resolve the issue. Discrimination at the workplace is a very big negative sign of the atmosphere that exists at the workplace. This issue can be sorted out by talking to the people involved in the same; the last option would be to sack individuals refusing to understand how dangerous discrimination at the workplace can be.

Developing an effective ethics program

Developing an effective ethics program is a very good step in order to resolve all the ethical issues arising in business. The most important thing in order to do the same is to create awareness. Without awareness in an organization, no manager can ever create an effective ethics program. A sound understanding of the ethical issues is a must, for instance if an organization is polluting the environment and the people in the vicinity are getting severely affected because of the same, the manager has to take appropriate measures in order to resolve the issue. This issue can be solved by creating an exclusive pit where all the pollutants let out by the organization must be dumped.

There is a very high need of strengthening the ethical culture and this must be done by the organizations constantly ignoring their responsibility towards the society. Ethics involve various aspects of the business like, transparency of business, honesty, integrity, responsibility etc. An organization conducting business without ethics can never succeed on the long term basis. There is a very fine line between law and ethics, the business organizations are forced to follow the law but that is not quite the case when it comes to following ethics. An organization following ethics is ought to be more successful than the organization not following ethics. It is imperative to have a code of ethics in order to fulfill the ethical responsibility that every organization has to. “Disciplining employees both ensures productivity and sets standards for the future.” (Ethical Dilemmas in Business). An organization that disciplines its employees is ought to fulfill its ethical responsibilities.

Ethics in Medical Industry

Ethics means a lot more then commonly perceived by the people. It is a branch of Philosophy. The term basically means encompassing right conduct and good life. The term is commonly perceived as analyzing right and wrong. But when looking at the central aspect of the term Ethics it is basically about “the good life”. In the sense that a life that is worth living or a life that is extremely satisfying, this is also held by many philosophers to be more important than moral conduct. Ethics and morals go hand in hand, ethics is simply the thoughts whereas morals are giving practical shape to those thoughts. There are many branches of ethics; and one among those is applied ethics, under which medical ethics is primarily classified.

When these medical ethics are applied by a practitioner, he should bear in mind that he must try his level best to make the patient benefit from his knowledge and skill in this field. This is very rarely seen these days; everything in the field of medical ethics has changed over a period of time at least in some Asian countries. The hospitals and the doctors make sure that they extract as much money as possible from the patient as they can. Even if a patient shows symptoms of viral fever, the right picture is never presented in front of the patient and his family members, the doctor’s advises the family members to keep the patient in the hospital at least for a couple of days, at the end of which he is made to pay lengthy bills, which in reality are nothing but fake, this has become more of an organized crime than a profession these days, people have to choose very wisely who they should go to and whom they should not. Some hospitals take the value of medical ethics to another level, they inform the family members that the patient is responding to the treatment in the ICU asking them to pay more money but in reality the patient has died long back.

This is experienced in some hospitals and even to claim the dead body there are a lot of people involved who hope to make good money out of all this. The family members are the people who suffer the most in this whole process, the medical ethics clearly state that the practitioner in no way should harm the patient but all this has been forgotten by the practitioner. In turn they not only harm the patient, but they also leave him devastated. Many kidney rackets have been exposed by the media in some countries, the doctors have become ruthless and have forgotten all the medical ethics, these ethics are the most important for any doctor but sadly no preference is given to these ethics. The root cause of all this is the large amount of money spent by the doctors to complete their studies, after they complete their studies a lot of expectations lie upon their shoulders of their so called near and dear ones, so under tremendous pressure of making a quick buck they forget all the medical ethics and start making a fool out of a patient.

Being blessed with good health is a birthright of every human being, and when things are not going right in the sense of health of an individual it is the responsibility of a doctor to make sure that the same order of good health is restored, and there is high need to do the same, every doctor should set an example in front of the other, so that each and every doctor tries his level best to provide the patient with good medical services, drastic steps have to be taken in this regard by the government of various countries where medical ethics are not being followed and the situation is chaotic. It is the right of every patient to be well treated and to be taken good care of, and the hospital staff and most importantly the doctors have to understand and follow this.

Conclusion

It is high time that the doctors start understanding the true value of medical ethics and start setting examples for the other doctors to follow. Only in such a case can the lost reputation of the doctors be regained. The most important thought which should never cross a doctor’s mind is using his profession to make maximum money out of it, if all the doctors follow this then this planet would surely become a better place to live in.

References

Ethical Dilemmas in Business. In Human Resource Issues. Web.

Emerging Business Ethics Issues. In AR.CC. Web.

How to Resolve Ethical Dilemmas In Business. In Home Morals. 2009. Web.