As I teach working adults at the university level, the biggest complaint is the lack of time to fulfill academic requirements. Of course, many working professionals must juggle their jobs, family obligations, and other priorities. It’s very difficult to be successful with these priorities. However, being successful is possible.
Everyone can benefit from good time management. Let’s examine professionals in the retail business. Professionals who interact with customers must be good stewards of their time. Yet, most people have so much trouble with time management due to conflicting priorities in their lives in a busy society.
For salespeople, life can be pretty demanding; attempting to connect with customers often means taking away from one’s personal life. Understanding how to navigate one’s time is essential in managing our priorities.
Salespeople are no exception. Mark Johnston and Greg Marshall, authors of Relationship Selling, maintain that the ability to manage time and territory is essential for salespersons for three reasons: (a) increase productivity, (b) improve customer relationships, and (c) enhance personal confidence. Therefore, good time management assists salespeople and other business professionals in mapping out their priority obligations.
Successful people distinguish the trivial from the important. This reality is true in sales, as well as other industries. In my technical field, I see many people operating in crisis mode because they are engulfed in trivial matters. Working only on trivial matters is unproductive when an individual is ignoring the important things. Time management speaks to what is really important to you.
Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits for Highly Effective People, argued that highly successful people know how to manage their time (aka ‘Put first things first’). He notes, “Effective management is all about putting first things first. While leadership decides what the ‘first things’ are, it is management that puts them first, day by day, moment by moment.
Management is the discipline carrying it out. The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do.” Therefore, distinguishing the important from the trivial is part of good time management.
Developing effective time management skills is not a simple or short process. When a salesperson is young and single, he or she has different priorities. The individual may be willing to make huge concessions, such as long hours, to move ahead or make additional income.
Yet, the individual may transition into a different stage, where he is married and has children. This reality can shift his priorities. Some people balance this strategically. Therefore, different life stages can impact an individual’s time management.
Discuss your professional experience on this topic.
Our youth program continues to grow at my church. Of course, it is a simple formula as our church is one of the biggest in the area. Church going parents make it mandatory for their children to attend church and participate in church services. However, when the children graduate from high school and became young adults, their attendance becomes very low or non-existent.
At that time, Velma Biddles was the youth leader and fairly new to the position. She and her youth advisors have seen the shift of young people’s attitude. If churches want to be effective with youth, they must change their underpinning message of: “Children are to be seen and not heard.” Our youth advisors started to deal with the root causes of matters concerning our youth. Sadly, many businesses are spending millions on symptoms. What about you?
Good problem solving can be an asset in an organization. Some organizations find themselves solving the wrong problems and getting less than desired results. Other managers assume that good technical staff members are naturally good problem solvers. However, this observation is not necessarily true. Effective problem solvers often have an intuitive skill set or enough training in problem solving for finding the right problems and making the best decisions.
John Gamble and Arthur Thompson, authors of Essentials of Strategic Management, outline the importance of filling key managerial slots with people who are good at figuring out what needs to be done and possess skills in effective implementation and in producing desired results. They note, “No company can hope to perform the activities required for successful strategy execution without attracting and retaining talented managers and employees with suitable skills and intellectual capital.” A problem can be defined as ‘an obstacle that stands in the way of achieving a desired goal.’ In fact, problems are divergences from the preferred outcomes.
The basic problem solving stages include: (a) Identify the problem, (b) Gather information, (c) Clarify the problem, (d) Consider possible solutions, (e) Select the best option, and (f) Make a decision and monitor the solution. High performing organizations move beyond superficial problem solving in order to get to the root causes. Good businesses realize that uncovering the real problems can be beneficial in many ways, such as reduced risks, cost savings, and greater efficiencies.
Jeff Butterfield, author of Problem Solving and Decision Making, argues about the benefits of talented problem solvers: “People who can identify, define, and solve problems are valued members of an organization.”
Like our youth advisors recognizing the problem and adapting appropriate solutions, today’s managers must be willing to move beyond their own bias to discover the real causes of problems. Too many managers seek to major in the minors. High performing organizations cannot afford to let this happen.
In general, effective problem solving can be a great competitive advantage for organizations. Formulating better decision making happens with more effective problem solving. Businesses with talented problem solvers will have a greater capacity for sustainable success.
Discuss your professional experience with problem solving in your industry or organization.
The purpose of this dialogue involves discussing the concept of Ethics from a moderate-induced pastoral perception. Ethics per se, as a universal model, involves or requires the decision-making acuities of any rational corporeal agent who intends to initiate or maintain a common, communal, and cultural balance among individuals.
As such, Ethics may be simplified by considering that the concept Ethics is a universal representative model that includes all the possible values, desires, and intents of human society. These components serve to form the ingredients that are molded and shaped to create a sort of utilitarian ideal.
This systematic decision-making process is then drawn to provide the ideal concept for what is to be considered as responsible and acceptable behavior. Because the ideal model is grounded in the dynamic and continual activity of harmonizing shared or ecumenical values against communal intents and desired objectives, Ethics then becomes both a suitable and most reasonable strategy for any extant structure that would be devoid of a practical methodology that assists in sustaining prolonging and strengthening the human-inhabited community. Very succinctly stated, Ethics, then, is the monitoring, sustaining, and prolonging of values and life using an acceptable set of agreeable contexts to avoid chaos at all costs.
Ethics from the Common Pastoral Perspective
From the common perspective, it is apparent that many individuals inhabit this cosmological domain we call society. We indeed, have or are sharing the commonness of possessing uniquely distinguishable attributes. Where this is not the case, then human behavioral characteristics would not be universally recognizable as uniquely separate and the simple adjective, individual and its supplementary cognates, would have no referenced or understandable meanings.
Despite the broad-spectrum of agreement that reflects the general idea that most individuals exhibit a tendency of being extraordinarily intelligent and competent to communicate and placate reasonable common practices on their own, unfortunately most of their efforts only result in creating or contributing to an undesired chaos.
Therefore, one of the most ultimate objectives of the ethereal community or spiritual structures, the church, is to assist in ensuring that the state of balance, growth, and maintenance is continued within this physical society to assure a continued existence and promulgation of the human species.
Unique differences do exist. External negative factors and the disproportionate presence of human values, illuminates the church, per se, as endeavoring to moderate the corpus of divergent human values and objectives with an intended hope of extending and bettering human society. Hence, the pastoral ministry becomes the church’s primary ordering instrument and may be considered as a useful and constructive vocation.
The church or ecclesiastical institution is but one agency among other ethical institutions such as business and commerce, court judicial systems, financial management corporations, and even merchandisers that exist. While each is uniquely different, all have similar aspirations and purposeful intentions aimed at maintaining, building, and cultivating, a useful and practical universal arrangement that both molds and shapes the common society of all. Merely addressing this common perspective regarding Ethics is not enough; the cultural perspective of Ethics too, must be addressed.
Ethics from a Cultural Balance Perspective
Having considered the vastness of the anthropological species, it is apparent that the present earth has a landscape that is draped and cluttered with many disagreeing ethnic groups, opposing religious beliefs and ecologically-damaging vocational occupations. Here, the sociological investigator or those who consider the boundaries of Ethics are met with impending difficulties in prescribing and designing an ethical system that truly benefits all and agitates none. This sort of scenario offers an opportunity to introduce the utilitarian model of Ethics in a cultural perspective.
Harsanyi (1986) states, “The fundamental assumption of utilitarian theory is that we ought to choose our moral standards by rational criteria…that we ought to choose the moral standards of the highest expected social utility” (Harsanyi, 1986, p 1). While the previous statement of Harsanyi (1986) does indeed, suggest an idealistic prescriptive remedy for what one should do in the instance of possessing an innate sense of “oughtness”, one quickly realizes that such a solution is not readily practical or socially accommodating because of the many differing cultural variances that do exist.
Again, in employing the “oughtness” concept, additional accumulative difficulties tend to surface; language barriers, societal customs, and religious beliefs, are often the most prevalent conflicts when considering utilitarianism. Despite this state of disunity, communication becomes an indispensable component regarding helping to balance the great cultural divide. Queries like “Whose global government is the most appropriate for all people?” “What political persuasion truly benefits everyone?” and “Whose academic description of Ethics is most readily to be believed?”
Societies have yet arrived at a most adoptable solution and the continual presence and practice of effective communication skills has helped leaders to sustain an operable state despite the world’s multi-faceted assortment of values, ideas, and objectives.
Ethics from a Communal Perspective
Imaginatively, there is an illustrative philosophical axiom that relates to the idea that if the physical world has sufficient amenities to sustain an individual people, then it must certainly also possess the capacity to sustain a corpus that contains every person. Revisiting the three components that are useful in maintaining an equitable balance of values against the intended objectives of all humanity, a simple and practical solution is to begin to view the world’s populace as a single immense community.
Although varying, culturally, and ethnically different, these observed differences truly make life an ongoing enterprise. Irrational creatures, being much more numerous and less adept in the skills of intelligence and transforming abilities, do exist in harmony. Humans, too, can co-exist peacefully if they would exercise their skills regarding communication. Many instances of miscommunication have ignited wars, isolated cultures, and decimated whole societies.
Sensibly, if the balance of human society is to continue, then more effective ways of ethical communication must be employed to retain the delicate arrangement of human society. Two inquiries to consider are; “What becomes of a society that lacks a set of Ethics to enhance its development?” and “What benefit does a set of ethical axioms do when an intelligent species has annihilated itself do to the lack of communication?” This scenario depicts that practical Ethics is not only possible but a necessity.
Please provide your personal or professional insight on the subject discussed.
(c) 2014 by Bruce Martin
About the Guest Blogger
Rev. Bruce Martin is a native of Knoxville, Tennessee and is a licensed and ordained minister of 35 years. He is a now-retired mechanical designer from the Tennessee Valley Authority. Rev. Martin attended the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia as a Civil Engineering major in 1974. He presently holds a Bachelors Degree in Systematic Theology from the American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee and a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership from the Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona.
He also completed graduate studies in Divinity at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Presently, Rev. Martin is a 3rd year doctoral candidate in Education at the Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. Rev. Martin was formerly the Senior Pastor of the Oakland Baptist Church in Louisville. While residing there, he taught New Testament Theology at Simmons College.
Reference
Harsanyi, J. C. (1986). Individual utilities and utilitarian ethics (pp. 1-12). Physica-Verlag HD.
Customers determine the value of a product or service. In today’s competitive environment, value creation is a corporate advantage. However, building this value is often difficult. People have different ways to assess value. Some folks use traditional ways based on some established reference point, such as a company’s price guide.
Yet, some ways are informal. In many countries, haggling is an acceptable practice of transactional selling. Philip Kotler and Kevin Keller, authors of Marketing Management, explain how businesses must understand customer decision making processes for purchases. They note, “They [customers] tend to be value maximizers, within the bounds of search costs and limited knowledge, mobility, and income.”
Here’s a personal example. My family visited Mexico and began the great American tradition of haggling sellers to get the price of merchandise down. Radio host Dave Ramsey believes everything is negotiable. Anything that is worth the effort of negotiation must have passed the value threshold to the consumer. Paul Peter and James Donnelly, authors of Marketing Management, note that culture, social class, and reference group influences play an important role in consumer behavior.
Some risks are involved with purchasing. This reality has a bearing on value for customers. If decisions involve low risk, they are often done quickly with little thought. Yet, major purchases normally require more risks, like buying a house. Therefore, having a good relationship with the seller is important.
The buying decision stages are (1) recognition of need or problem, (2) determination and description of the traits and quality of the needed items, (3) research for qualified buyers, (4) acquisition and analysis of proposals or bids, (5) evaluation of proposals and selection of suppliers, (6) selection of an order routine, and (7) performance evaluation and feedback.
Mark Johnston and Greg Marshall, authors of Relationship Selling, maintain that many organizational purchases are motivated by the requirements of the firm’s production processes, merchandise inventory, or day-to-day operations. Therefore, customers are very value conscious on high priced items, such as cars.
Customers use varying methods to reduce their buying risks. Negotiation expert Carleen Hawn recommends five common sense approaches for effective negotiations, which are: (a) don’t bargain over positions, (b) separate the people from the problem, (c) focus on interests, (d) invent options for mutual gain, and (e) insist on using objective criteria. In most cases, haggling at a specific retailer involves a one-time transaction. Johnston and Marshall further suggest that value creation is what ultimately gets customers to come back. Therefore, businesses that allow haggling must build relationship selling components for repeat value to customers.
Discuss your professional experience with value creation in your industry or organization.
Visionary leadership is vital to organizations that wish to exist in competitive environments. Yet, it is not enough to have only one visionary leader in an organization’s existence. Through their visions, leaders can articulate their values and principles.
Aubrey Malphurs, author of Values-Driven Leadership, notes, “An organization’s core values signal its bottom line…every organization must have a commitment to values that matter. The organization must passionately stand for something.” There are numerous examples where a visionary founder departed the scene. Consequently, the organization began to falter and in some cases fail.
For example, George Eastman founded Eastman Kodak Company in 1888, which later came to be known simply as ‘Kodak.’ Eastman was a high school dropout with an average intelligence according to academic standards of that time. Even though he grew up and had to support his widowed mother and two sisters, Eastman had a knack for business.
At the age of 14, Eastman worked as an office boy in an insurance company and later got into other business ventures. Eastman’s high energy, his gift for organization and management, and his entrepreneurial mind were all personality traits that helped transform his Eastman Kodak Company into an American industry leader. When Eastman died on March 14, 1932 at the age of 77, the company lost more than just its founder.
Due to the founder’s vision, Kodak become a dominant player in photographic film. In fact, the company controlled 89% of the photographic film market in America during 1976. Despite past success, the company lost its way. By the late 1990s, Kodak struggled financially due to the emergence of digital photography. This reality was strange since Kodak invented the core technology utilized in digital cameras. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy and sold many of its prized patents.
Many organizations have lost the sense of a dynamic leader with a compelling vision. Visions often are denoted as powerful images in one’s mind that compels him or her to action often at a subconscious level. To many, dreams and visions are the same thing because they often happen while someone is asleep.
Some people think about their dreams; others may talk about a particular vision. Yet, a visionary leader can share his or her vision and compel followers to make the vision become a reality. Visionary leadership can be defined as “the ability to create and articulate a realistic, credible, and attractive vision of the future that improves upon the present situation.”
Gregory Dess, G.T. Lumpkin, and Alan Eisner, authors of Strategic Management: Creating Competitive Advantages, explain that leaders must develop and implement their visions. A visionary leader can do these things and more.
In a survey of executives from more than 20 different countries, 98% of these global leaders noted that a strong vision was the most critical trait of a good leader. Additionally, those surveyed stated that the ability to formulate a strategy to implement one’s vision was the most vital knowledge skill.
Consequently, it is not enough to have a vision; a leader must have the organizational skills and communication abilities to implement a vision. Today’s businesses need to create leadership development programs that stimulate the growth of visionary leadership from within.
Discuss your professional experience with visionary leadership in your industry.
In late spring 2013, I was able to witness an interesting example of a company promoting philanthropy and community relations. Shoichiro Toyoda, Toyota’s honorary chairperson, donated $2 million to help build the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee. As you may know, the Toyota Motor Corporation, a multi-national automaker, was established in 1937 and founded by Kiichiro Toyoda. Toyota employs more than 330,000 people around the globe by 509 consolidated subsidiaries.
The University of Tennessee reported that Toyoda made a trip from Japan to the campus because he wanted to see his good friend, Sen. Howard Baker, and the new facility. Toyoda also visited Denso Manufacturing Tennessee, Inc. to tour their manufacturing facilities and then Eco Park to which Denso Manufacturing Tennessee had donated land, trails, trees, and other resources to the community for environmental education on litter prevention, recycling, and pollution prevention. Toyoda voluntarily took a seat right next to local school students and was fascinated watching a hazardous material disposal simulation. Toyoda appreciated Denso Manufacturing Tennessee for contributing to the community. It was Toyoda’s genuine gesture to care about children and education, communities, and environmental issues.
Pless (2007) pointed out that “a strong values base is also a characteristic of the role of the steward. The metaphor of the leader as steward makes references both to being a custodian of values, a stronghold to protect professional and personal integrity” (Pless, 2007, p. 445). I value the opportunity to meet the leader who passionately led Toyota Motor Corporation to contribute to efficient manufacturing systems, strive to produce automobiles with safety and environmental conscious concepts, and set the tone at the top to enhance corporate social responsibility.
Change Management
Adjusting business strategies and practices in a quickly changing global environment is a key subject. As an automotive industry leader, Toyota has been tactfully changing management to adjust and adapt to constantly changing business environments. Aspirations and principles found in Toyota’s Code of Conduct is influenced by the Japanese cultural characteristic that emphasizes harmonious business relationships with customers, suppliers, dealerships, and local or global communities while focusing on providing lively, safe workplaces to employees.
The Code of Conduct guides Toyota’s business strategies such as human resources or environmental protection activities in accordance with fundamental ethical policies. Toyota focuses on multiple subjects to operate fairly in the global marketplace in and communities where different cultures and diversities exist. Toyota strives to utilize labor diversity while supporting equal employment opportunities including promoting a women’s workforce and people with disabilities.
They also invest heavily in Research and Development (R&D), not only to produce quality cars and trucks, but also to promote safety activities and environmental preservation globally. For instance, Toyota’s sustainability report focuses on improving traffic safety and car quality, contributing to a low-carbon society, and supporting global communities while they thrive to comply with safety and environmental laws.
R&D is not limited to a car’s safety features but also to accommodate workforce changes in production systems. Recently Toyota announced that one of their assembly plants is dedicated to the employment of retirees. The plant is designed to produce only one model at a slower cycle time to be easier for the senior employees’ level of physical fitness. This activity is Toyota’s quick response to the government’s amendment to the senior citizen’s employment promotion law to provide a friendly work environment (Sankei Digital, 2013, para. 2). It helps older workers to be able to operate machines and work at assembly lines at a slower pace.
The Toyota Manufacturing System (TMS) is known as a socio-technical system, based on their management philosophy and practices to reduce unnecessary moves or inventories, to achieve the just-in-time and lean-manufacturing concepts. TMS is designed to set up efficient and effective assembly lines for profitable production systems while quality fundamentals are met. On the contrary, accommodating the aging work population has become a focus rather than excelling profitability. Even if the assembly plant may not operate as efficiently as they would wish, Toyota found the initiative to solve the social challenge. Toyota is often known to lead the industry in Japan by addressing social issues and initiating systems for improvement.
Profitability vs. Sustainability
The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan were nobody’s fault. Over thousands of years, on the small island country, the Japanese have learned to find ways to live in harmony and help each other to survive from environmental threats. This harmonious society was harshly tested by the earthquake and tsunami to survive.
The Tohoku region in northern Japan is known for its fishing industry, severe winter weather, and is often being threatened by earthquakes. On the contrary, the locations are convenient for manufacturing sites to transport products to Tokyo and large metropolitan areas, consequently, many Japanese automotive components companies or heavy-duty industries located their manufacturing facilities in this area.
Severe damages by the earthquake and tsunami paralyzed water and power supplies, roads, or telecommunication systems. Infrastructure damages kept products from being transported out of the area. Manufacturing plants could not resume operations for weeks, and automotive component inventories were exhausted before the global supply chain was restored. As a result, automakers in Japan and the United States were forced to suspend operations or reduce production hours due to a parts shortage. The disaster tested the vulnerability of the global economy affected by the major disaster and left us with many questions on how we can best prepare for unexpected catastrophes such as hurricanes, tornados, floods, wildfires or a financial crisis, such as the Great Recession.
One isolated country’s disaster can have a huge impact on the global economy. If organizations want to be better prepared for disasters, they must establish an effective risk management program and find the best investment options or contingency plans to minimize operational interruptions. Furthermore, governments and corporations can collaborate to assist victims and develop unfortunate areas. It requires a national strategy to coordinate social responsible activities to provide immediate reliefs and rescue a nation.
In order to distribute electricity to the affected Tohoku areas, manufacturing companies in metropolitan areas modified their work schedule and implemented a rotational blackout. Within six months, the Toyota Motor Corporation initiated regional revitalization plans in the Tohoku region, including the establishment of the Toyota Motor Tohoku Corporation to support post-quake reconstruction.
It is also equally important for corporations to protect the natural environment while being profitable. Steiner and Steiner explained the increasing interest in sustainable development by corporations to support non-polluting economic growth that raises standards of living without depleting the net resources of the earth (Steiner & Steiner, 2012, p. 442). It is a corporation’s social obligation to prevent pollution and provide safe workplaces for communities.
Michael Porter defines pollution in his book, On Competition, as a sign of resources being used incompletely, inefficiently, or ineffectively when scrap materials, harmful substances, or energy forms are discharged into the environment. Porter feels pollution is also as sign of mismanagement.
For instance, Toyota’s environmental philosophy is to reduce environmental impact at all stages of vehicle development from production, use, disposal, and recycling while undertaking environmental activities in all business areas on a global scale (Cortez & Penacerrada, 2010, p.124). The Toyota Manufacturing System emphasizes eliminating wasteful resources, unnecessary conveyance, and excessive inventory to achieve efficiency, increase profitability, and reduce costs.
Porter also stresses that pollution reveals flaws in the product design or production processes (Porter, 2008, p.350). Cardboard or plastic bag packaging is a truly wasteful material because it requires so much labor and time to unpack, flatten, gather, and transport it to landfills. Toyota recognized and corrected this flaw in processing by replacing cardboard packaging with rigid, plastic reusable containers. Thousands of suppliers are required to use reusable boxes to protect parts from being damaged during transportation, and at the same time, eliminate packaging waste.
Setting up the returnable container system required an initial investment to purchase boxes; however, this cost is usually amortized during the program life of two to four years. After their use, the plastic boxes can be sold to other companies for further recycling. In 1999, Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America (TEMA) created an initiative to become a zero-landfill company. Since 2012, thirteen manufacturing plants have been recognized as true zero-landfill plants.
I believe that profitability does not always have to suffer while corporations are trying to be responsible for social issues. There is a way to attain both objectives at the same time.
Can you share other good corporate examples? Who drives the social corporate responsibility in the organization?
Noriko Chapman, who is a native of Japan, is an international traveler and a role model to millions of women looking to overcome extreme obstacles in life. She is a production control section leader for DENSO Manufacturing, TN.
DENSO Corporation, headquartered in Kariya, Aichi prefecture, Japan, is a leading global automotive supplier of advanced technology, systems and components in the areas of thermal, powertrain control, electric, electronics and information and safety. Its customers include all the world's major carmakers. Worldwide, the company has more than 200 subsidiaries and affiliates in 35 countries and regions (including Japan) and employs approximately 120,000 people.
A mother of two, she has over 20 years of experience in the automobile industry and is a cancer survivor. Noriko led a successful campaign to assist the Tennessee Rehabilitation Center (TRC), which works with disabled adults to secure employment. Her book co-authored by Dr. Daryl Green, Second Chance, was inspired by the TRC. For more information, you can visit her on Facebook.com.
References
Cortez, M.A., & Penacerrada, N.T. (2010). Is it beneficial to incur environmental cost? A case study of Toyota Motors Corporation, Japan. Journal of International Business Research, 9, 113-140.
Pless, N. (2007). Understanding responsible leadership: Role identity and motivational drivers. Journal of Business Ethics, 74(4), 437-456.
Porter, M. (2008). On Competition. Watertown, MA: Harvard Business Press.
Ethical decision-making is important for businesses. Trust and integrity must not be lost. There are three ethical concerns for the sales organization, which are (1) cheating, (2) misuse of company resources, and (3) inappropriate relationships with other employees.
In fact, losing a customer or client’s trust is fatal stroke for businesses. Famous management expert Stephen Covey suggests that trust is the cornerstone for productivity in the market. Once customers lose faith and trust in an organization, that organization has lost ground in the market.
Employees are motivated by different stimulus. In fact, different employees have different motivations. Motivation produces psychological forces that determine the direction of a person’s behavior in an organization. In my technical field, there are few things that are impossible to accomplish; it’s a matter of time versus money.
However, finding these solutions depend on a personal drive. In many organizations, supervisors search for the magical ingredient to improve employee performance so that the organization can be successful. This initiative isn’t easy!
For example, a salesperson might be motivated to earn high commissions at any cost. He knows his management is only concerned with the bottom-line. At the end of the year, his sales manager responses in anger to this salesperson, “You’ve committed the company to something to which we cannot commit.” Therefore, being promoting selfish behavior can cost a business in the long run.
Organizations must train and create a good ethical environment. Gareth Jones and Jennifer George, authors of Contemporary Management, further argue effective managers fully utilize their human resources to gain a competitive advantage. Developing the desired behavior in employees is invaluable.
In many cases, employees exist in a transactional relationship (if you do this, you will get that). For example, a sales representative for Mary Kay will get a pink Cadillac if she reaches the designated sales limit. In fact, business perks are pretty routine.
Most people have an internal compass that allows them to distinguish right from wrong. For example, an employee might be tempted to take a bribe from his company’s competitor. Johnston and Marshall make a clear distinction between a gift and a bribe. A bribe is a financial present given to manipulate the purchase decision.
In an effective ethical system, an employee would not compromise the trust with the company, including any internal customers (supervisor, manufacturing group, etc.).
Finally, there will be numerous situations that test a person’s moral behavior in organizations. Ethical decision making is a way of life. Businesses must create good ethical systems where employees are accountable for their conduct. Trust must be at the center stage of the process.
Discuss your professional experience with making ethical decisions in your industry.
Life keeps getting tougher for folks to survive. While politicians and media pundits seize the opportunity of each life-changing event, families seek to make the best of a struggling economy. According to the latest government job report this month, just 74,000 more people were employed in December versus 205,000 expected by USA Today’s survey of 37 economists.[1]
Life will become tougher for job seekers as globalization sweeps down on country after country. For some countries, they will become industry leaders while others will fade into the night of obscurity. Many Americans are retreating from the workforce, causing the unemployment rate to fall to 6.7% in December.
In fact, only 62.8% of the adult population is participating in the labor market now; participation rates relate to those individuals who have employment or those actively seeking employment.[2] Heidi Shierholz, an Economic Policy Institute economist, explains: “We’re going to have a long-term unemployment crisis for a long time.”
This current low participation in the job market matches the lowest level since 1978. According to USA Today business reporter John Waggoner, the economy could be puzzling to the average American: “…corporations have plenty of cash in their coffers to expand and meet future demand. But the job numbers don’t reflect that yet.”[3]
Companies taunt their corporate responsibility to the community with such public relationship activities as sponsoring local events. Yet, more workers wish these companies would renew their social contracts with American employees to ensure them of a decent wage.
Consequently, some workers often become victim of their company’s good fortune. Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, explains, “The best companies outsource to win, not to shrink. They outsource to innovate faster and more cheaply in order to grow larger, gain market share, and hire more and different specialists—not to save money by firing more people.”
The world’s poor stands at more than 1.1 billion people, mostly rural Africans, Indians, and other South Asians. In fact, the poorest fifth of the world’s people earn just 2% of the world’s income.[4] With companies moving into emerging markets, they can raise the standard of living for millions.
Today world’s middle class earns an average of $700 to $7,500 per family member according to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Report. Many companies would argue that their global reach has improved the quality of life for millions around the world and this is a small price to pay for the loss of a few jobs domestically.
Discuss if American businesses must deal with the search for cheaper labor and the consequences on the quality of life for millions of individuals locally.
As the clock strikes midnight, the world once again brings in another new year with anticipation. For many people, the last several years have been filled with financial crisis and personal turmoil.
With the realities of globalization, one country’s misfortune can have negative consequences for other countries across the world. Therefore, a new year brings a lot of uncertainty for the future.
Furthermore, today’s businesses must be ever on guard for market turbulence and global threats. Given this reality of personal consequences, individuals must be more mindful of effective decision making. In fact, bad decision making can hurt an organization as well as an individual.
Denis Collins, author of Business Ethics, notes that the prevalence and costs of unethical decision making at work can be substantial for businesses. Therefore, good decision making can dilute a competitor’s advantage. In this discussion, we will examine how decision making can carry unintended consequences.
Today’s leaders must consider the aftermath of their poor decision making. Sadly, many folks fail to understand the consequences of their decisions. For example, Vanessa Williams was one of these fallen Hollywood icons. In 1983, Williams became the first African-American woman to be crowned Miss America.
However, her immediate success was short-lived due to a scandal. Consequently, Williams was forced to relinquish her title; she probably did not think her youthful deed would come back and wreck her dreams. Yet, the consequences not only damaged Williams but her family, friends, and millions of her fans. Nobel Prize author Albert Camus once noted, “Life is the sum of all your choices.” In spite of all wise counsel, some people seem to have a knack for making poor decisions.
Sadly, many poor decisions have unforeseen impacts. Nancy Cavender and Howard Kahane, authors of Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric, argue for better decision making under this financial crisis: “Now, more than ever, we need to think critically about the world we live in and the decisions we make.” They point to the dire consequences of poor decision making. In fact, these circumstances often can be traced back to a root cause.
TheLaw of Unintended Consequences relates to any purposeful action that will generate unintended consequences. This law can be categorized into several areas: (a) a positive unexpected benefit called serendipity, (b) a negative effect which is contrary to the original intention, and (c) a potential source of problems which is commonly referred to as Murphy’s Law.
Like Murphy’s Law, some decisions may appear to afflict some people as if their lives are cursed. Making the right decision is a difficult process. No one will applaud your many good decisions; however, you will probably catch heat over the bad ones.
In fact, every person, regardless of their background or social standing, can benefit from good decision-making techniques. In this life, most people make decisions to the best of their abilities. When various things happen, especially bad ones, individuals must be ready to deal with them. Therefore, understanding unintended consequences can assist in helping us make better decisions for the future.
Discuss your understanding of the Law of Unintended Consequences as it relates to effective decision making.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 10,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
