Ethics in Business and Media

The need for ethics in business and media

Our world is, in my opinion, headed downhill quickly on the ethical slope. Businesses are most concerned with how to make the most money, and many are getting to the point of not caring how they get there. Obviously this can cause some ethical issues.

We live in a culture where telling consumers to trust us isn’t good enough anymore.
In an article for The Guardian, Tim Melville-Ross makes the point that businesses have to have ethical standards at their core. They have to constantly be proving themselves to consumers, and not just asking people for their trust. He says that businesses depend on trust in order to thrive. “Business must be conducted in an open and honest manner, otherwise trust is eroded and businesses fail. But calls for an increased trust in business miss the point – trust needs to be earned.”

Reading that made me think of something I heard the other day. I told someone that my major was Advertising, and their response was “Why? All they do is lie to people to get them to buy a product.” At first, I was a little offended because I felt like this person was judging me by what other people have done, which really isn’t fair to me. But that is people’s perception of us today. They don’t believe things we say because advertisers before us have behaved unethically and lied to sell products. It’s just the same with businesses other than advertising.

Lying is a pretty obvious form of unethical practice, and it is from the business side to the consumer. That is how I tend to think of ethical practices, from businesses to consumer. But there are practices between employees that can be unethical as well.

Victoria Duff wrote Examples of Unethical Behavior in the Workplace, and made some observations that I never would have thought about. She separated her thoughts into five categories of unethical practices: Deliberate Deception, Violation of Conscience, Failure to Honor Commitments, Unlawful Conduct, and Disregard of Company Policy.

In the deliberate deception category, she gave examples such as sabotaging other people’s work, calling in sick when you aren’t really sick, or taking credit for work that you didn’t do yourself. The list goes on, but all of these can lead to people not trusting each other within the work place and, in some cases, can lead to lawsuits.

Violation of conscience is when your boss asks you to do something that goes against your moral code. Duff gave an example of selling toasters. “Your sales manager calls you into his office and threatens to fire you unless you sell 50 large toasters. You know the large toasters are inferior products and have been selling the small toasters to your customers, instead.” By telling you that he will fire you for selling a better product to customers, he is behaving unethically.

Failure to honor commitments is fairly obvious. It is having something promised to you, like a day off, and when it comes around your boss doesn’t honor it because work is too busy. Being the type of person I am, I wouldn’t have thought of this as being unethical. Because I am the type of person who goes with the flow normally, I wouldn’t question my boss’ decisions like that because I want everyone to be happy and work to run smoothly. If it were to happen more than once it would bother me. But if my boss were to do it once, I probably wouldn’t think of it as being unethical.

Unlawful conduct is anything unlawful that is going on within the company. Whether its pens or getting money from an expense account for non-business related expenses, it’s stealing and shouldn’t be allowed to go on. And, lastly, disregard for company policy is not abiding by the policies laid out by the company. Duff says, “To disregard company policy is unethical because it has the potential to harm the company and other employees.”

All of these things, to me at least, point back to earning trust inside and outside of the company. If employees are acting unethically, it is a definite reflection on the company itself. People don’t really want to do business with someone whose employees are willing to steal from them. I think it all goes back to having ethics at the core of the company. If the employees working in the store aren’t behaving ethically, chances are the heads of the company aren’t either.

Ethics in Media

I think a great example right now of why we should have an ethical standard in media is Bryan Williams. Viewers watched him faithfully and believed that he was telling them the truth for years. With all the things that have come out about him recently, it gives people reason to be wary of trusting, not only newscasters, but anyone in the communications world. People are saying they won’t watch him anymore, but more than that they are questioning the credibility of NBC. However, according to an article by Brian Stelter with CNN Money, “Williams has been hurt individually much more than NBC has been hurt institutionally.”

Ethics are important because the only way we can assure people that we can be trusted is to show them that we are trustworthy. And the way to do that is by having an ethical standard.




Sources:

Melville-Ross, Tim  “Ethical Business: Companies need to earn our trust.”  The Guardian . N.p., July 2013. Web. 15 Feb. 2015
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/ethical-business-trust-values 

Duff, Victoria. "Examples of Unethical Behavior in the Workplace." Small Business. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2015.
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-unethical-behavior-workplace-10092.html 

Stelter, Brian. "Some Viewers Think Brian Williams Deserves a Shot at Redemption." CNNMoney. Cable News Network, 16 Feb. 2015. Web. 16 Feb. 2015.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/16/media/brian-williams-nbc-survey/index.html