Corporate Scandals and Moral Responsibility

Part 1: Moral responsibility and corporate scandal

Introduction

The moral responsibility of the corporate organisations is the practice of the companies to meet the societal goals and philanthropic needs in the society (Lins, Servaesand Tamayo, 2017).The organisations in the recent era of globalisation choose to be sustainable in doing their business ethically and morally. Ethical oriented practice and legal compliances at the workplace are the major success factors of the organisation in securing future sustainable development of the firm. The study helps to identify the moral responsibilities as well as the corporate scandal in the recent years, where the US educational system is suffering through various issues in managing the schools sustainability. The study also provides a scope to recommend some suitable suggestions in order to improve the activities of the US education system to manage sustainability and run the school ethically.

Corporate social responsibility

There are different theory related to corporate social responsibility such as Carroll’s pyramid and triple bottom line theory, through reviewing the theories, it is possible to understand moral responsibly of the institutions in doing their business in the society. As per the Carroll’s pyramid, the layers are economic responsibility, legal, ethical and philanthropic, where the organisations can create values for the stakeholders engaged with the business. The economic responsibility is necessary to be managed in order to fulfil the moral responsibility, where the business should maximise their profitability and share their profit margin with the stakeholders such as employees, shareholders and managers. Providing high return on investment to the stakeholders is the responsibility of the organisational leader to engage the stakeholders and create values for them in long run (Schrempf-Stirling, Palazzo and Phillips, 2016). This is a major moral responsibility to run the business sustainably in the market and create values for the stakeholders, who are contributing to sustain the business in the society. On the other hand, legal framework should be executed properly in the organisation, where the company must focus on business licensing, international trade license and copyright and intellectual property rights to sustain in the economy (Ali, Frynasand Mahmood, 2017). The institutions also protects the employees through implementing the employment rules and legislation including Equality Act 2010, Data Protection Act 1998, employment opportunities and non-discrimination practice at the workplace. These are mandatory for the organisation to run their business morally and ethically.

Apart from that, it is also essential for the institutions to manage ethical responsibility to act morally in the society and create values for the stakeholders engaged with the company. In this regard, the organisational culture must be developed well, with equality and diversity management, fairness and equal opportunities, respect and integrity at the workplace and managing transparency and accountability. These are major ethical practice at the workplace, which provides a scope to the organisation to act morally and create vales for the employees. Avoiding harm at the workplace is also another ethical responsibility, where the organisational leader executed the Health and Safety Act at Workplace 1974 and improves safety measures to protect the employees. On the other hand, the philanthropic responsibility is also mandatory to act morally in the society and maximise social welfare in long run. In this regard, the organisation must contribute to community and corporate citizens for sustainable social development (Albuquerque, Koskinen and Zhang, 2019).

Corporate scandal in the US education system

In the recent era of globalisation, the US education system is suffering from different issues, where the schools face difficulties to manage their moral responsibility to run their operational activities ethically in the society and serve the students efficiently. It is the responsibility of the schools to create values for the social communities, but the institutions recently face problems to fulfil the responsibility and commitment toward their students and other stakeholders including the employees, managers, shareholders, as well as government and social communities as a whole. It is not easy of the US education system to manage sustainable practice at the organisation as there is social cost and high cost of managing the educational operations ethically. Some of the schools in the country fail to invest effective monetary resources in the operational activities to run their activities ethically, which may deteriorate the value of the education in the society due to lack of available resources and poor design of the educational coursework. On the other hand, some of the schools face problems to manage ethical code of conduct where the management team cannot execute the legislative structure and policies at the schools to handle the students equally. It further deteriorates the practice and violates the rules and legislations in the US education system. This is one of the serious scandals, made by the US schools and colleges in the recent years to run their operations and serve the students, mainly MBA students, with effective resources of education. On the other hand, there are other social scandal which is lack of contribution in the society and poor efficiency to develop the educational standard. It is the responsibility of the schools to hire efficient staff and experienced teaching professionals but due to lack of efficiency and improvement in the activities, the schools fail to hire the right staff to teach the students successfully. It becomes difficult for the schools and colleges to maximise their educational standard but there is another major issues existing in the US education system which is human greed, where the school authority make partiality during the admission and favour the wealthy parents for more admission fees. This is the reason for which the schools and colleges also fail to provide high standard education where there is inequality in the admission method, as admissions are taken place in terms of wealthy and money investment in the schools rather than the efficiency and knowledge of the students. There are also other corporate scandals related to management where the leader fails to fulfil the requirements and educational standard and invest more to run the activities due to lack of financial strategy, and poor management of the schools (Graysonand Hodges, 2017). The US education system also fails to manage diverse students and this further violates the rules and legislations in the schools where the scandals related to lack of diversity management, inequality exists. Other corporate scandals are related to bad corporate governance, where the US education system faces issues to manage their operations morally in the society and they also fail to manage educational standard due to lack of investment and ineffective resources in the schools and colleges (Jamali and Karam, 2018). The other issues are related to lack of reliability, lack of integrity and transparency which also violate the ethical practice and moral structure of the schools and colleges. It is difficult for the schools to run their operations morally and ethically to secure sustainable development due to bad corporate governance as well as lack of proper organisational structure, where the leaders face difficulties to run the educational system legally and ethically by making fair practice.

Strategies to mitigate scandals

The above mentioned scandals are due to the lack of entrepreneurship skill and poor management at the US education system, and in this regard, it is mandatory to develop proper strategic planning for the schools and colleges to run their operations morally and mitigate the corporate scandals. The school authorities must develop equal admission technique to mitigate human greed so that the students can get equal opportunities to get effective admission as per their capabilities and knowledge. Proper organisational structure and corporate governance must be established well so that the teaching professionals and the managers can follow the structure and develop educational standard for supporting the students with education course and fruitful resources at the schools and colleges (Crane, Mattenand Spence, 2019). The schools also need to focus on developing proper strategy in order to maximise student’s interest, without which it is not possible to sustain the US education system effectively. The educational institutions also need to improve their operations legally by executing the rules and legislations related to educational activities and organisational property rights as well as quality standard of education. On the other hand, it is essential to maintain ethical practice to improve sustainable educational activities. Moral actions are hereby necessary for the corporations to benchmark the problems and improve the moral standard of the business (Frynasand Yamahaki, 2016). The leader and the management team at the institutions must focus on managing transparency and accountability of the admission related activities, improving integrity and respect as well as ensure efficient management to deliver high quality education to all the students. On the other hand, for moral responsibilities, the school authority needs to contribute in the society for creating values for the social communities. Investment in the social development projects like education, charity would be effective to run the US education system sustainably. Additionally, it is important to maximise equality and diversity to promote equal opportunities for all the students who can get the scope to take admission as per their capabilities.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that, it is necessary for the schools and colleges to act morally and fulfil the corporate and social responsibilities to mitigate the corporate scandals and ensure future sustainable development. Through moral practices, ethical practice and legal compliances, it would be effective for the US education system to secure future development and create values for the students and other stakeholders engaged with the institutions. The school management team needs to mitigate the corporate scandals and improve the activities morally and ethically to protect the rights of the individuals and act responsibility by following the ethical code of practice and legal rules and legislations in the educational institutions without any human greed, partiality in the admission process and lack of investment to maintain educational standard. Through investing in educational projects as well as managing green environmental footprint, investment in the educational activities, fair admission process, ensuring equality and providing equal opportunity to the MBA students and others, it is possible for the schools and colleges in the US to tackle the scandals and establish the efficiently in the US education system.

Part 2: Whistle blowing

Introduction

Whistle blower is the person in the organisation, who reports the organisational misconduct. The misconducts of the organisation are past and present rules, issues in developing the organisational decision, where the whistle blower can be past employee’s present staff members and others, engaged directly and indirectly with the business. The person exposes the secretive information and activities that is deemed illegal, unethical and not correct in both the private and public organisations (Lawrenceand Brown, 2019). The information provided by the whistleblowers are related to violation of the company’s rules, poor policy framework, threats to public security, fraud, corruption and lack of law and legislation enforcement on the organisation. Sometimes the whistleblowers play a crucial role as a supervisor by exploring the business unethical practices in the organisational workplace. The study is important to analyse the practice of whistle blowing as well as the role of the whistleblowers in the organisational context.

Concept of whistle blowing

Internally, the whistleblowers are important for the organisation to share the information about unethical and illegal practice at the organisation where the whistleblowers try to convey the message and supervise the system for betterment in near future. On the other hand, the external whistleblowers are supposed to bring allegation against the accused organisation through attracting the external sources such as law enforcement, media, and government and took risk to face further retaliation from those accused organisations that are alleged for wrong doing. There are numbers of law protecting the whistleblowers and he third party group is strong to face legal actions, criminal charges, termination from any position and social stigma (Richardsonand Garner, 2019). The law enforcement and legal activities are effective to support the whistleblowers in order to improve justice and raise the legal activities in the society. In the recent era of globalisation, there is increasing numbers of whistleblowers in the economy where they are responsible to manage the accused organisation and convey the information for further betterment of the whole system (Smailiand Arroyo, 2019). Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 protects the whistleblowers and their activities legally. The internal whistleblowers report within the company and the reports are related to the illegal workplace practice, lack of rules and legislation at the workplace and organisational related illegal practices. There are also external whistleblowers such as lawyers, watch dog agencies, media and government who are taking care of the business activities (Park, Bjørkeloand Blenkinsopp, 2020).

Role of whistleblower

There is great role of the whistleblowers for the organisations in the recent years to run their business ethically. It is a tricky discussion about whether the whistle blowing activities is ethical or not. But it is actually ethical, where the organisation can run their business sustainably. The protection of the whistleblowers in eh society is there under the legislative structure and they try to convey information related to the illegal activities at workplace and organisational unethical behaviour (Frynasand Yamahaki, 2016). Hereby, there is efficient role of the whistleblowers in the organisation to provide proper formation for running the business ethically. As per the corporate social responsibility, it is the responsibility of the organisations in the society to create values for the social communities as a whole including all the stakeholders by running their business operations ethically and legally (Park et al., 2018). Thus, the whistleblowers play a crucial role to explore more effective decision to manage business risk, improve the organisational performance, increase shareholder’s confidence, and enhance corporate social responsibility. The whistleblowers are also beneficial of the organisation to reduce right track to run the operational activities ethically, and it also provides an opportunity to the organisation to maximise the interest of the stakeholders and helps the firms to take legal actions against the unethical works at the workplace (Crane, Mattenand Spence, 2019). On the other hand, there is some disadvantage of whistle blowing which are risk to personal safety, destroying the company goodwill, negative effects on the employee professional career and diminishes trust among the workforce. The risk of whistle blowing at the organisation is conflict of interest, where the employees and the managers face difficulties to develop proper strategic decision to run the business ethically (Lawrenceand Brown, 2019).

Ways SR organisations rewards the whistleblowers

In the recent era of globalisation, the small and medium sized organisation encourages the whistle blowing activities in the market, which are effective for the firms to restructure their policies and practice for managing the stakeholders engaged with the business. The company Marshfield Bakery is a small sized bakery firm, where the leader needs to encourage whistle blowing activities (Smailiand Arroyo, 2019). The firm is suffering from creating sustainable business, and due to utilisation of high heated oven at the production sites, there is greenhouse gas emission and the employees found it unethical for the society. A group of employees try to convey this message to the leader so that the business will be running ethically and sustainably. The leader also must aims to encourage the whistleblowers and aim at empowering them in the organisational decision making practice. In this regard, the whistleblowers are able to share their opinion and they decide that it is essential to utilise renewable resources like solar panel and air energy in order to run the business sustainably and protect the environment (Richardsonand Garner, 2019). The whistleblowers are actually the internal employees of Marshfield Bakery, where the leader cooperates with them and develop sustainable business. The leader also focuses on utilising electric cars for distributing the bakery products which further help to develop green supply chain and protect the natural resources and environment by reducing the greenhouse gas emission (Park, Bjørkeloand Blenkinsopp, 2020). On the other hand, LovetheSales.com is also another small and medium sized firm, where the managers are acting as whistleblowers at the organisation to maximise the profitability of the company which is the major responsibility of the firm. The leader must focus on their decision in enhancing e-commerce activities and developing company website to track the market demand and customer’s orders for running the business successfully. In this regard, the managers also aim to implement data protection Act 1998 in order to protect privacy of the customers and make them comfortable to pay against their product orders (Park et al., 2018).

Conclusion

The whistle blowing activities are hereby efficient for both the organisationsLovetheSales.com and Marshfield Bakery to run their business ethically and secure future sustainable development.

Reference List

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