EHM2 TASK 2: DEVELOPING ORGANIZATIONAL ETHICS AND SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR
Purpose of the CSR
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an essential inspection for stakeholders in corporate ethics. CSR's purpose is to help organizations enhance and not just operate. Suppose a company actively integrate CSR into their companies. In that case, it is expected that these companies will be aware of the impact their business operations have on society in terms of social, economic, political, and environmental aspects, as well as others. The ideal outcome of using CSR would be that a company would become self-aware and better the environment they work in, among many aspects.
It is typical to break down the impacts of CSR into three separate categories. The pragmatic reason or the theory of how an organization or company can use its power in society in a responsible way. If the company does not use practical reasons, it will risk losing its company (Wang et al., 2020). Ethical reasoning is the obligation and requirement of an organization to do the right thing ethically for its stakeholders and society (Wang et al., 2020). The last of the categories is strategic reasoning. Strategic reasoning is the understanding or reasoning that businesses and consumers depend on each other and will benefit each other in society by providing services and goods, but also with things like bringing jobs to the area.
Primary and Secondary Stakeholders
To make an applicable CSR, primary and secondary stakeholders must be identified when assessing the company's ethical footprint to implement paradigm toys successfully. A CSR cannot appropriately recognize moral effects without identifying both primary and secondary stakeholders. They likewise can't get bits of knowledge for how they can work as an organization to draw in with the climate around them with society.
For paradigm toys, the primary stakeholders will be the people or gatherings who are straightforwardly impacted by choices or activities made by the association. On account of Worldview toys, this would be the workers, the clients and individuals who have contributed or hold a monetary stake and essential partners in the organization.
The secondary stakeholders of Paradigm Toys are people who are not directly financially invested or related to the company's activities and operations. Still, they will be indirectly affected by the company's choices. This group would be parties or individuals and can be many people such as lawmakers or other government bodies or officials, vendors, competitors, and even the media. All of these groups are affected indirectly by their interactions with the organization.
Responsibility to Stakeholders
The primary objective of CSR is driving the higher-up leaders, such as directors of paradigm toys, to create and implement ethical measures that would ensure corporate and social responsibilities to the stakeholders that have been mentioned previously. To be more specific, moral and societal standards must meet the needs of stakeholders and are continuously monitored to support their ethical standards. We can make sure that policies, procedures and practices are in place to ensure that the products delivered to consumers are of the utmost quality and that the options for consumers to get issues resolved quickly if their needs are not satisfied by the products. Many opportunities are measurable and observable that can meet the needs of all stakeholders. Examples of this for direct stakeholders would be ensuring that employees' wages are livable and competitive compared to competitors in the industry and that the salary can satisfy the basic needs of living and other financial markets of an employee. A "what-if analysis" can also be done to understand and determine if dividends for investors would be best served for both the short and long term or if it would be in the best interest of investors to forego bonuses and reinvest any capital that would be used back into the company to serve better the financial needs of said shareholders (Carroll & Brown, 2018).is
When considering indirect stakeholders, there are multiple opportunities in which we can reach out and engage in improvement opportunities for societal and ethical impacts as a company. Being assertive and proactive in fostering relationships with local and government officials is essential. Creating rapport and inviting these individuals to our facilities will show that our best interests are to be allies to the government in movements and agendas that are best for the people they serve. It would also be beneficial to engage in opportunities to lower or reduce the waste of products, such as using recyclable boxes for our toys or recyclable or biodegradable plastics in the toys themselves. These are merely ideas or opportunities that we can use to encourage leaders and directors to use and, in turn, challenge leadership to come up with their unique ideas.
Fostering Ethical Culture and Ethics Analysis
Another equally important aspect of CSR is identifying and defining the ethical culture within the said organization. Ethical culture in any company can be best defined and described when it is continuously worked on and cultivated. Businesses that maintain a culture of ethics by interacting with other organizations by rules, policies, codes of conduct, performance indicators, communication and training programs, informal company proceedings, culture, rituals, ETC.
While Paradigm Toys works toward establishing and creating a strong and highly regarded ethical culture, it will have many impacts, including on the company's internal and external reputation. The organization's leadership has a unique opportunity to help create this ethical shift and, in turn, create a "trickle-down effect" throughout all other parts of the company to successfully implement this new culture and organization-wide. This will allow them to participate in ethical morality opportunities identified in the CSR. This will also enable them to integrate these opportunities into their routine (Carroll & Brown, 2018). Implementing these changes can be done in several ways, such as positively enforcing the company policy and using incentives that would encourage employees to follow the new culture and standards that are expected of them. Management can also indirectly influence the success of implementing this new ethical culture by continually working towards being respected by those below them or subordinates and continuing to lead the company with courageous and inspiring actions that others will also desire to emulate.
The reason behind an audit of the ethical culture of the company is to "determine if the culture is aligned to support ethical behaviour [via] regular and comprehensive audits of all relevant cultural systems, both formal and informal (Carroll & Brown, 2018). What is discovered in the audit will aid in determining the company's next steps in its action plan. Suppose the company does not meet the standards or is not in alignment with ethical behaviour. In that case, the company will be immediately required to assess and change their ethical culture companywide. It has been shown in studies that "ethical culture will take years to develop and take years to change. A poor ethical culture within the company can be detrimental to its future success. It is critical to the company's continued existence that they are audited frequently to ensure that the company is functioning at the highest standards of society and ethics and that issues are identified early on to adapt and remove harmful components as quickly as possible.
Ethical Dilemma & Potential Solutions
When audits are performed or practised, it is common to find ethical dilemmas within the organization. In reality, all organizations face different circumstances that create the potential for unethical difficulties to arise throughout the organization's life. In the auditing process, it is essential to observe employees and how they embody the company's policies and other business sectors in different companies and their ethical cultures (Etter et al., 2019). One common problem witnessed throughout the auditing process is ethical issues that come from the company's attendance policy. The audit for Paradigm Toys observed the same ethical dilemma relating to the attendance policy throughout the company.
It appears that one of the reasons that the attendance policy is such an abused company policy is that management often is dealing with the challenge of creating attendance policies, including things as disability standards, sick, and bereavement that can be applied in a diverse number of circumstances as well as universally at the same time (Etter et al., 2019). We often view a policy that can foster good attendance practices for one group of employees, but for others, it can be harmful to another group. Because of this, a loose policy that can apply to the needs and circumstances of most employees will leave areas for exposure and abuse for other employees to take advantage of, which is when we see most of the abuse of the policy.
To make a lasting positive change to the current policy, several avenues can be explored as solutions for the company to put into place. A couple of these solutions will be explained in detail. The first solution would be for the organization to identify and record any suspicions of employees abusing the current policy to make it more generalized or dynamic to locate the loopholes being used (Etter et al., 2019). A second solution that can be implemented would be to create an entirely new policy that considers and addresses patterns or repeat sick times requests and makes requirements for more detailed documentation from medical professionals. This can be investigated if an employee develops a design of calling in sick or taking PTO for longer than expected amounts of time, such as multiple days during the week. The two options posed as solutions stated previously can provide improvements to the current policy that is in place.
On top of the posed suggestions previously stated, there is also an opportunity to find value in performing research and dedicating time to research practices that have been proven successful in other companies who have implemented and adhered to the policy once it was implemented. Another option is to look into the current policy and clarify and use wording that is more explicit and defines when sick time-, bereavement-, short- and long-term disability, FMLA and when can be used and making sure that the policy is clearly explained and easy to understand. It is also essential to ensure that employees have and understand the policy when they are first hired.
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Implementation Proposal
After taking a look at the current policies in place at this company, we believe that the solution is creating a new policy about patterns of abusing or using extensive amounts of sick time and needing additional documentation, as was suggested previously. We feel that it is the most ethical solution because it protects the company from employees continually abusing the policy. Still, this solution also protects those employees who need the procedure by creating an evident and apparent approach from the get-go that will be expected to be followed.
To be able to roll out this solution, we will rely upon our human resources department to assess the current policy and create an amendment to the policy that would incorporate the new requirements of needing additional documentation. It will be necessary to ensure that it was adequately communicated to management and down the chain of command (Nguyen et al., 2018). It would also be beneficial to potentially explore the idea of explaining the new policy in meetings and pieces of training to go over these changes and make sure that all employees are aware of and understand these recent changes. With new employees, it would be essential to implement programs and training to ensure they understand the exercise. Implementing training to change and fix the attendance issue at Paradigm Toys is necessary. When creating a new training program, three different aspects should be considered when forming and building this program. These components are conflict solution, safety, and creating a positive environment.
In concerns to conflict resolution, it can be embodied in different forms. This can be related to multiple aspects such as employee-to-employee conflicts, employee and leadership conflicts and even management to manage disputes. The struggle has been viewed in any form in the organization, and understanding this can help to have better reach by making training programs that can impact many levels of the organization (Nguyen et al., 2018). The training has been seen to be the most valuable in previous situations when it has been done around identifying both sides of the conflict's needs, disappointments and expectations related to the competition, and a clear path for leadership to follow if the conflict is unable to be resolved. Similarly to the attendance policy mentioned earlier, if employees and leadership fail to improve the employee adhering to the procedure, the issue can be escalated to the Human Resource department if further action is necessary.
A necessary part of the training programs is also safety training. Safety training will allow a sense of security that Paradigm toys have protected itself from liability and promoted overall safety for the employees while they are working for the company. At the same time, they are employed by Paradigm Toys (Nguyen et al., 2018). Aside from educating employees on policies and procedures while working with the organization, it is essential to make sure that employees can prove that they understand the policies through safety examinations or employee contracts that prove they were educated and that the employee understands all policies, procedures and practices that are expected of them. It is crucial to ensure understanding of these policies, and helping employees understand the importance of the policy will also help improve adherence to the new safety practices. As employees can better understand the necessity of safety policies, it will create a culture of safety and, in turn, lead to fewer workplace incidences or accidents that could cause issues in the future, such as being exposed to unwanted liabilities or being short-staffed.
As the training is being created to have a flourishing positive work environment, it would directly impact the culture of positivity and overall satisfaction and joy in employees and their current position and standing in the company. As employees create happiness and fulfilment in their jobs and careers with the company, the employee morale, output o and success of the company will improve in many aspects.
For the training to be impactful and beneficial companywide, the activity must be as interactive and hands-on as possible. However, due to the restrictions of COVID-19, many of our employees are currently working remotely and are not permitted to come back to the corporate offices for the time being (Zhang et al., 2019). For this reason, I would recommend that the new training be offered in a hybrid format with a mixture of a PowerPoint presentation and role-playing either over virtual meetings or in person, whichever is most plausible for the company. The display in a combined format will aid in keeping the audience engaged because it requires active participation and holds the meetings and practice activities professional. By including both employees and management in training, it can help all parties to feel comfortable in working together.
The training should be in an open format, allowing participants to feel comfortable asking any questions they may have and getting answers. It would also be recommended to have handouts for reference if they need to look back on it for information on how to contact human resources or read the policies (Zhang et al., 2019). The programs will be the most successful when the employees are mandated to engage with the course material and digest it rather than just reading through and acknowledging documents. The training should only be the first step in creating successful changes and having them implemented and welcomed throughout the organization. The movement needs to remain relevant. It is vital that management continually use and practice training aspects, such as implementing suggestions and instructions from the training.
Paradigm Toys and its leaders and management need to embody what the culture is and have it been in line with CSR. By doing this, Upper management needs to develop and audit the culture of ethics, understand and identify potential ethical violations or dilemmas, solve problems, and find ways to address the issue (Latapí et al., 2019). They also should ensure that their ethics training is practical and thorough. By Paradigm Toys keeping high standards for the ethics culture, they have no reason not to be recognized and treated as a highly ethical company.
The organization has always been proud of the culture of ethics and its positivity and reach in all aspects of society, both directly and indirectly. Paradigm Toys continues to self-evaluate and think critically of themselves in how they can improve, as well as creating steps for the company to take actions to implement changes that may be needed, so they can continue to have these high standards that they pride themselves on (Latapí et al., 2019). They also can influence society and the corporate world to safeguard the reputation that they have strived so hard to create to make it so successful in the industry.
References
Carroll, A. B., & Brown, J. A. (2018). Corporate social responsibility: A review of current concepts, research, and issues. Corporate social responsibility. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S2514-175920180000002002/full/html
Etter, M., Fieseler, C., & Whelan, G. (2019). Sharing economy, sharing responsibility? Corporate social responsibility in the digital age. Journal of business ethics, 159(4), 935-942. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-019-04212-w
Latapí Agudelo, M. A., Jóhannsdóttir, L., & Davídsdóttir, B. (2019). A literature review of the history and evolution of corporate social responsibility. International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility, 4(1), 1-23. https://jcsr.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40991-018-0039-y?uc=racialjustice
Nguyen, M., Bensemann, J., & Kelly, S. (2018). Corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Vietnam: a conceptual framework. International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility, 3(1), 1-12. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40991-018-0032-5
Wang, C., Hu, R., & Zhang, T. C. (2020). Corporate social responsibility in international hotel chains and its effects on local employees: Scale development and empirical testing in China. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 90, 102598. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027843192030150X
Zhang, Q., Oo, B. L., & Lim, B. T. H. (2019). Drivers, motivations, and barriers to the implementation of corporate social responsibility practices by construction enterprises: A review. Journal of cleaner production, 210, 563-584. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652618334516
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