Introduction
Business ethics are important as it
enables organisations to be responsible and aim at achieving the overall good
for the society. This could easily translate into sustainable profits within
the organisation. Business ethics requires strong leadership for it to be
sustained within the organisation. This is especially the case where ethical
conduct requires additional strain that could easily be done away with. The
leader impacts the ethics in the organisation through expression of personal
values, enforcement of discipline and the encouragement of an organisation
culture capable of guiding the actions of an employee. In this paper, I also
focus on the learning processes that I underwent and the impact that the
different learning approaches on my ability to learn. I have also indicated in
this paper how my experience through the course has transformed my earlier
perceptions.
Area selected
In this course, I got to appreciate
alternative perspectives about ethics. I had hitherto held the view that ethics
are universal with certain values being universal across board. In my opinion,
ethics is ethics and can be replicated across the board. However, in this
course, I was confronted with different scenarios where the line between what
is ethical and unethical was quite thin. It is where the grey areas arise that
leadership becomes very important in the organisation. I also managed to learn
of the various pitfalls that managers must guard against in the organisations. Brown
(2007) outlines these pitfalls and explains each of them at length indicating
how leaders need to act in order to provide direction for good ethics within
the organisation.
Business ethics reinforce responsibility
among leaders in the organisation. Leaders can always be held to account for
unethical conducts that are committed in their organisations. This underscores
the leader’s responsibility to ensure that there are structures and systems to
facilitate the practice of good ethics within the organisation. This means that
even though the authority over specific activities may lie with the
subordinates, leaders remain responsible. Brown (2007, 146) demonstrate this
using the example of the New York Times’ former editor Howell Raines who was
held responsible for the actions of a star report under him who was in the
habit of fabricating stories. Even though I was already aware of how leaders
can be held responsible for the actions of their subordinates, this lesson made
me appreciate the need for a leader to work diligently towards securing good
ethics within the organisation.
Business ethics bring the question of
perceptions to the centre stage and this mainly applies to the leaders. The
other important point on leadership that I took notes of was the need for
leaders to mind the perception that others have about them. Hitherto my course,
I had made the presumption that all was important was for leaders to espouse
the right values and the rest would flow naturally. Transactional leaders
discuss their personal values openly with their subordinates and this enables
them draw the inspiration on how to go about various ethical dilemmas
(Northouse, 2012). This also stretches to the perception that the subordinates
are likely to have about their actions. The leader’s intention may not always
be perceivable by independent observers. Brown (2007, 142) demonstrates the
importance of synchronising internal values and the perceptions that others
have about their ethical choices. In this example, Patricia Dunn, a former
board chairperson at Hewlett Packard Co. had allowed the violation of the
privacy of some of the board members. She had found it necessary to facilitate
the investigations but would later bear the brunt of an agitated public for the
violation.
Business ethics focus on the interplay
between the organisational culture and the need for active regulation of
employee conduct. In this course, I was able to gain a different insight from a
perception I held earlier that the employees did not need supervision in order
to be ethical. Brown (2007) elaborates the role of the leader as one that must
be stretched to active supervision of employees. This position is reiterated by
Collins (2012) who cites the main advantage of a transactional leader as one
who constantly engages subordinates on ethical issues and uses the frequent
engagements to steer them along the right direction. The leader must however
avoid concentrating on the law as the only yardstick for determining what
should be done. There will always be situations where what is legal is actually
very unethical and the leader’s guidance is very important in overcoming the
ethical dilemma (Collins, 2012). On the whole, this course served as an
important source of insights on ethics and I leave with more information than I
had before.
Links to learning
The learning process in this course had
a mixture of methods which ranged from theoretical lectures to discussions and
group activities. The learning process was quite complex in the group
activities where the focus had to be both on the collective learning processes
as well as the individual learning processes. This was the most insightful part
of learning as it was very involving emotionally. My experience is reiterated
by Haggis (2002) who attempts to bring out the relationship between emotional
involvement and the learning process where students tend to learn more when
they are happy and excited about what they are learning. Group work was also
very positive as it allowed for ventilation between group members at a level of
equality where all opinions were valued equally. This was as opposed to
seminars where the lecturer’s views tended to influence my thinking and
suppressing my ability to generate alternatives to arguments provided.
Even though involvement in group work
was my most preferred learning style, we faced a number of challenges including
the need to avoid group think and avoid wasting time on unnecessary arguments.
It was nevertheless a very exciting exercise as each of us in the groups would
argue based on their past and current experiences and this helped promote
understanding on the concept of relativism ion ethics. Haggis (2002) also
outlines the practical parts of learning as being most effective in enabling
students learn. I tended to understand more when we were involved in
discussions than when we were simply seated listening to the lecturer.
Individual assignments were quite a
challenge to me in many ways. Firstly, I was faced with the uncertainty on
whether I was doing the right thing. This pushed me to read more widely in
order to provide myself with the assurance that the content of my assignments
was correct. This means that by the time I was completing an assignment; I
tended to have read widely and learned more than was required for the
assignments. This was in contrast to group work where members would share
responsibility over the different sections of the work and only discuss prior
to the compilation of the full report. Even though I tended to study more from
individual assignments, this part of the course was more boring and I tended to
remember less information than from group work.
On the interplay between theory and case
studies, I tended to benefit more from the case studies. I discovered that my
understanding is sharpened when I apply the theory learned to specific case
examples. For instance, the need to apply responsibility over ethics to the
leader where the subordinate has violated ethical norms was only understood
after I reviewed how it was applied to Howell Raines when he as an editor was
held responsible for the actions of a Star when he was forced to step down over
his failure to detect, stop or prevent the vice (Brown, 2007, 146). The same
could be said of most other theories covered in this course.
I had not concentrated on my learning
styles prior to this course but now I realise that the more involving and
exciting the learning approach is, the better I am. I will apply this in my
future courses by participating more actively in class discussions and group
works. I will also do wide reading to identify case studies that can be applied
to understand whatever theories I encounter in the future.
Conclusion
In this course, I made important strides
both in the field of ethics and on the focus on my learning processes. The
ethics course enabled me to appreciate certain realities that I had not taken
seriously in the past. One of these is the fact that ethics must be enforced
through discipline and the fact that the leader cannot expect employees to
naturally apply the values. I was also able to appreciate the fact that the
leader must continue to bear the ultimate responsibility in the organisation
and this means they must always get involved. In addition to these important
lessons, I was able to appreciate my preferred learning styles. I was able to
discover that practical examples and active involvement in groups and class
discussions are the learning processes that worked best for me. I intend to
concentrate on these styles to make the rest of my MBA program more meaningful.
References
Brown, M.E, ‘Misconceptions of ethical leadership:
how to avoid potential pitfalls’, Organisational
Dynamics, (2007), Vol. 36, No. 2, p. 140-155
Collins, D, (2012), Business ethics, Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons
Haggis, T, ‘Exploring the ‘Black Box’ of Process: a
comparison of theoretical notions of the adult learner with accounts of
postgraduate learning experience, Studies
in Higher Education, (2002) Vol. 27, No. 2, p. 207-232
Northouse, P.G, (2012), Leadership: theory and practice, 6th Ed, Thousand Oaks,
SAGE
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