Ethical Competencies Ethics and Morality

ETHICS AND MORALITY

Ethics and Morality: Ethical Competencies

Part 1: Value Conflict Scenario

Recently, the business's cost-cutting in health insurance plans has raised some serious concerns for the employees. The businesses want to shrink their medical bills coming from insurance plans, especially for those who have chronic conditions, for which the companies have found a solution (Abelson, 2015). The solution is beneficial for the firms themselves but not for the employees. Companies heavily rely on high deductibles of premiums from their employees’ salaries. This has imposed an extra burden on employees’ family incomes since they have to pay big amounts for medical bills, particularly serious treatments. Consequently, the employees feel discouraged from seeking treatment of such diseases and find it disappointing on their employers’ side that they have created a conflict in their business values and ethics. 

Keeping a business’s employees healthy so that the firm keeps running is the primary objective of employers these days. Some of them have to make difficult decisions regarding the deductibles to avoid disappointment from employees’ side in fear of not losing the best ones. Since there is a conflict in cutting costs of business incurred on health insurance plans for employees and my costs for cancer treatment, I have to make a strategic decision on the entire cost-cutting proposal. To keep the business going in tough times of pandemic, when everyone else also needs medical attention besides my cancer issue, I have to rely on ethical decision making (EDM), mainly Rest’s four-component psychological model that should include moral awareness, moral judgment, and intent of creating maximum benefit for all (Crossan, Mazutis & Seijts, 2013).

I plan to revise a health insurance plan based on value design (Miller, 2019). This method requires matching evidence-based practices to their practical application via contacting health professionals. This would prevent re-admissions and the period for an illness to be treated so that health insurance costs are reduced naturally. This procedure includes bundled payments, which is another feasible cost-cutting for the business. 

Personalized health insurance plans could help identify each employee’s needs better since their health concerns would be targeted individually. In this way, the employees would notice that their employers acknowledge their individual needs and would be more connected to the firm that cares for them so deeply. Knowing the employees and their desires personally creates a natural sense of trust in them, leading to personalized healthcare decisions. It would not put more burdens on the genuinely needy ones and not be lenient on those already privileged. 

Although this might lead to other concerns of business ethics, one more feasible option of cutting down health coverage costs is scrutinizing the employees' medical data. This would give an in-depth insight into the employees in dire need of insurance, such as my cancer treatment, whose heavy medical expenses should be covered, and to what extent. Analyzing the benefits of the employees’ improved health conditions would, in return, benefit the company. The company has to be extremely vigilant while extracting and studying big data and that too, by first informing the employees about the purpose. 

Further in the ethical debate of healthcare coverage, the immense consequences of management’s decisions would greatly impact the entire workforce and their families. I also contemplate initiating the proposal of cutting on 100% free insurance plans by letting the employees have meaningful healthcare benefits and options choices. It would help them make informed decisions and know about their authentic needs. 

Part 2: Personal Analysis

From my life experiences, I have faced security and abandonment issues since I was adopted at the age of four years. I have been looking for security and protection as I felt I should offer the same to my team. I feel empathetic towards my employees since I do not want them to be in the same situation as four years old. 

My purpose and motive are to keep the business alive and open to future growth prospects. I sincerely hope that when the business has gained momentum again and gets back on its feet, we will pay full medical coverage to our employees. I believe that every employee would understand the troubling circumstances we are currently facing for the company's greater good. All those connected to this company should infer that it is for their brighter future. As soon as the company self-stabilizes itself financially, it will be in a better position to serve its workers. I can't appease anyone or pursue personal gain from them since I am also paying for my health insurance. 

I want to feel at peace with the decision I will make so that I can be certain that the best impact of the decision will be observed for all. 

I have never had an experience like this before that could have a similar situation or ideal successful solutions. 

I am an introverted extrovert who chooses to speak and write well. I also like taking risks. As mentioned earlier, my personal or family factors that have influenced my attitude towards risk-taking are my fear of abandonment and security concerns. The conflict condition that I am most comfortable, confident, and effective is when both sides of the situation have been thoroughly explored. The deep investigation of the matter gives me a sense of self-assurance that I am aware of the issue and can handle it better. In this way, the solution would be favorable for both parties, which is best in ethical decision-making- maximizing benefits for both sides. 

Part 3: Contextual Analysis

The demonstrated core values of the culture are integrity, which denotes acting in a strong ethical manner so that everyone becomes a priority. Being the present and CEO of my company, I need to follow the ethical leadership guidelines presented by Yukl et al., outlining honesty, truthfulness, justice, altruism, and uniformity of behaviors in the spotlight (Kaptein, 2019). The commitment towards these core values shows that the person is committed to acting ethically and creating positive intrinsic expectations for others, which is the ‘employees’ in my case. 

The representation of the company’s behavior in honesty is also another core value of the culture. Honesty should be represented in ethics-related communication between the employer and the employees to reinforce trust. It would help gain the attention of my followers when they would realize that I aim at treating them fairly and considerately. 

It is not just the policies of the firm but also fairness, accountability, promise to customers, diversity and inclusion, teamwork, and continuous learning that are highlighted as core values of the culture. Welcoming opposing opinions from the workers and accepting diverse viewpoints is part of the core values of innovation. 

Various dimensions would be open to the company as it would give rise to ideas that were never thought of before, guiding the firm to fulfill promises made to the customer of delivering quality products and services. All of the values are interlinked with teamwork and collaboration. 

The relevant stakeholders are all of the people involved in the company. Their level of interest is high since their family’s income and benefits are at stake. 

The firm is open-minded and inclusive. It would help me to enable the act, and I hope the people might accept the change for their good in this very respect. We are a small crew, and I doubt the ‘group think’ factor. It could be deduced that if we move forward as a group and collaborate as a team, it might be a favorable factor in this regard. 

The risk involved would be losing the whole team since we are a small team. The cost for these stakeholders is the health insurance plan, and if we are to lose some of it, it will hurt their sentiments, leading to the risk of losing them altogether. To minimize this risk, Bachman, Habisch & Dierksmeier (2018) suggest that practical wisdom and leadership go hand in hand to solve complex problems. Based on the literature provided by these authors, I have to interlink practical wisdom with strategy, decision making, and human resource management to gain the best possible solution for risk mitigation. 

I am the only source of formal and informal powers in my organization. I have the authority over the situation at hand. The potential allies are my two business partners and, apparently, no adversaries at the moment. The organizational policies and financial documents are the ones supporting my decisions. We do not have previous experience related to this issue for implementing anything like this. 

There are seemingly no laws, regulations, or professional codes outside the organization that impact this decision. However, according to the Affordable Care Act, small companies who have employees less than 50 in number, which we are, do not have to pay health insurance to their workers (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2018). Also, most printers in our industry do not offer fully paid health insurance for team members who comprise less than 50 individuals.  

Part 4: Reasons and Rationalization

I will position myself to be a source of actionable alternatives by guiding them to the Affordable Care Act. Meyer (2018) suggests that with positive organizational scholarship (POS), exploration of human strength, creation of resilience, flourishing, and healing paves a pathway for human excellence, which I intend to follow for my employees as well. 

I am working to convince my team of the health insurance change plan. My most persuasive argument would be those presented in the first section, such as bundled packages for those who are less privileged and no extra benefits for those who are already well-off, along with value-based health insurance and scrutinizing employees' big data with their consent and permission. Since I am a patient of cancer myself, I have to think of a valuable strategy that could benefit all the employees and myself. I would take care that company virtues and my values do not clash. For this, I would have to create a sense of trust with two things: build awareness about the change of plan, relationships that might change with the upcoming change, which I would try to prevent, and also the different scenarios and transactions that would resultantly happen (Harvard University, 2013). The counterarguments would lie on the locus of loyalty and trust in a conversation. I would try to reason with them that figuring out what is right and wrong is what I am aiming at in a stressful situation so that maximum benefit is delivered to all. Since it has been mentioned earlier that a similar situation has not been experienced before and that the company is small with 50 employees only, I would like to make these arguments with my leadership virtues and values to build a strong foundation of trust (GBH Forum Network, 2014). I would try to convince them not to get disappointed that I have snatched them of their right and that once the business gets back on to its feet and is in a better financial situation, things would turn around soon. The conversation would take place in a group.