Factors for an Ethical Business | Case Study

Globalizing for Growth

Ethics is about behavior, it is about doing the right thing. Every company should create a culture of ethics. The ROBoInc company needs to implement and sustain an ethical workplace culture to keep employees from doing consulting work for another company outside of their work hours. Robbins and Judge (2019) created a combination of the practices for what management can do to implement an ethical organizational culture: Be a visible role model (Robbins, 20180110, p. 563): the leadership at ROBoInc must be a model for employees to follow. As the role model, the leadership can motivate the employee to set higher standards of accountability. Employees will look to the actions of top management as a benchmark for appropriate behavior, but everyone can be a role model to positively influence the ethical atmosphere (Robbins, 20180110, p. 563) Communicate ethical expectations (Robbins, 20180110, p. 563): Communication is always important for any organization to run smoothly. The ROBoInc’s managers must make sure to always have time for employees concerns or questions and have an open door policy for employees provide any feedbacks and discuss problems. The managers communicate daily to employees and that includes recognizing employees who have acted in an ethical manner. The ROBoInc’s managers should reinforce ethical behavior sooner to keep employees working second jobs during work hours. Provide ethical training (Robbins, 20180110, p. 563): The Human Resource department should setup seminars, workshops, and training programs to reinforce the organization’s standards of conduct (Robbins, 20180110, p. 563). The company should provide an ethical policy training for employees. This can help employees recognize what the company considers to be ethical and unethical. Visibly reward ethical acts and punish unethical ones (Robbins, 20180110, p. 563). Performance review for employees should include monthly’s evaluation to measure up against the organization’s code of ethics. Employee who act ethically should be visibly rewarded for their behavior, and unethical acts should be punished. Provide protective mechanisms (Robbins, 20180110, p. 563). Human Resources department and Management should have an open-door policy, so everyone can discuss ethical dilemmas and report unethical behavior without fear of reprimand (Robbins, 20180110, p. 563). The HR department should have a transparent and trustworthy system to protect employees at workplace. It will create a healthy workplace environment for employees. It is important to realize that business is a part of society. The ethical company has gained a more significant place in the competitive business environment. The ethical company attract more talent employees globally who can provide a good service to the global markets. The company practice unethical may cause some issue with customers boycott their products globally.  The ROBoInc company should have a policy in place to keep out employees working a second job outside of work hours. If the consultant works for second company, the company might see an impact on their business because employees disclose the classified information with competitors and the robotics software could be compromised and customers may be taken away from the company. The ROBoInc company structure is a hierarchical organizational structure. It contains a direct chain of command from the top of the organization to the bottom. The CEO is the top leader of the company who makes all critical decisions. The managers will take his order to implement to the department. With this type of vertical structure, the ROBoInc company make easy for employee to communicate with managers. The management is centralized, it is easy for employees to know whom to report when they have a problem. The company’s structure has also organized them by job category. This allows employees within the same department to share resources allocated by managers and for managers easy to manage the project. ROBoInc wants to restructure the company while keeping costs down as much as possible. With this hierarchy organizational structure, there are many key questions ROBoInc’s leadership must ask themselves and be ready to answer when faced with an organization design challenge (Robbins, 20180110). A major impacts organizational structure is company is the company hired more sales staff and software developers but have no managers to lead these groups. They have to restructure the organization to expand the business globally. As the company expands the business to address the increasing global demand, they also focus on organizational performance to meet customer’s requirements. The company also need to look into the budget when expanding business. It is important to keep the same budget when increase work force. To improve the performance on the organizational structure to meet the customer’s demand, the company should conduct an organization assessment which allows organizations to pinpoint where the weak point of the performance. Also set the goal to success by aligning key leaders and teams around the problem where they are trying to meet the goal. What type of leadership and culture are required to achieve the value proposition? (John Beenson, 2014). The CEO defined a clear management role and interaction models provides clarity to employees. Another question for executives is does the current organization structure the best approach for meeting the needs of the business? The company hired another 20 sales staff and additional software developers therefore, they need the ability to transfer assignments and duties that aren’t strategic in nature to others who have the ability to manage and implement the new tasks. Ethical leadership requires ethical leaders. If leaders are ethical, they can ensure that ethical practices are carried out throughout the organization (The WorkplaceCoach, 2013). Within the ethical company, leadership should lead on ethics and take responsibility for both good and bad results. As the company grows and the challenges in the global environment become more complex, it is importance to choose ethical leaders when implementing a new organization structure. The ethical leader can be an ethical model for the employees do the same. An ethical leader is aware of how his/her decisions impact others therefore he/she uses his/her power and authority to serve the greater good instead of self-serving interests. When working globally, ethical leaders also need to keep a set of core values as the basis for global policies, and the company will align its decisions with its values. Based on the business strategy of ROBoInc, the functional organizational structure is a good fit for this type of business. This type of organization can divide the organization by division or region because of the expansion of global business. This forms the current hierarchy of senior management, marketing, sales, and customer service. The functional structure also facilitates the development of specialists when the company hires additional software developers. This allows for teams to easily share information between one another and grouping the employees with specialized skills can perform tasks quickly, and efficiently. The employees have a clear definition of top management and they know the expectation of who reports to who. In addition, the employees know their career path within their functional unit which makes it possible for them to be highly motivated to advance their careers as they move up within the hierarchy.

References:

-          Robbins, S. P., Judge, T. A.  (20180110). Organizational Behavior, 18th Edition [VitalSource Bookshelf version].  Retrieved from vbk://9780134729749 -          John Beeson 2014. January 23,2014. Five Questions every leader should ask about organizational design. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/01/five-questions-every-leader-should-ask-about-organizational-design -          The WorkplaceCoach, 2013. March 6^th, 2013. The importance of Ethical Leadership. Retrieved from https://www.theworkplacecoach.com/the-importance-of-ethical-leadership/ -