Ethical dilemmas in contemporary society

Management Ethics

Current Ethical Issues in Management

There is hardly a managerial or business situation imaginable that does not involve at least some ethical considerations. Each decision that a business and/or a manager makes necessarily effects the employees of at least one organization, and often multiple organizations through both direct and indirect influences. Even in matters where finances will not be directly effected, changing work environments, expectations, tasks, and almost all areas of business necessarily create changes to employee perspective and attitude towards their job, and thus many ethical issues could arise from such changes. Furthermore, there are also ethical considerations regarding how customers and consumers will be affected by certain business changes; when price rises and/or quality drops unnecessarily, an ethically dubious area has been reached. Finally, for publicly traded companies, there is a an ethical duty to shareholders to maximize profits and thus increase the value of the shareholder's stock, but this must be balanced with other ethical considerations.

One recent piece of news from the business world that illustrates many of these ethical issues is the announcement that Dell, which is primarily a hardware (specifically personal computer) manufacturer will embark on a new partnership with Salesforce.com Inc., a software manufacturer. Under the released terms of the partnership, which are incredibly vague, Dell will promote Salesforce.com, Inc.'s customer relationship software, and Salesforce.com, Inc. will be allowed to directly market and promote their products to Dell's customers (San Francisco Business Times 2009). This partnership, even without all of the details divulged, raises some serious ethical considerations for managers at both companies.

The fact that Dell has decided to promote another company's software as a part of its own business services activities means that customer service managers now have a more complex system of bosses and consumers to please, as the directness of Dell's own customer relations services has been disrupted (San Francisco Business Times 2009). The manager has a duty to the shareholders of both companies to increase profits, both for Dell and for Salesforce.com, Inc. At the same time, their primary ethical duty must still be to the consumer/customer, and there is definitely the risk of this duty being compromised by the addition of an external software system and company to promote and keep happy. Providing adequate direction and expectations to employees in Dell's customer relations department will also be heavily affected by this new partnership, and there is definitely an ethical imperative for the manager to provide an encouraging and productive work environment, and in order to this there will have to be a determination of which company to truly serve.