Ethical and Unethical Issues Related To HR; Finance; Marketing

Business ethics:

✓Business ethics refers to contemporary organizational standards, principles, sets of values and norms that govern the actions and behavior of an individual in the business organization

Unethical Behavior in Business:

✓we're talking about actions that don't conform to the acceptable standards of business operations, failing to do what is right in every situation.

Ethics in human Resource Management:

Employees Discriminations:

✓A framework of laws and regulations has been evolved to avoid the practices of treatment of employees on the basis of their caste, sex, religion, disability, age etc. No organisation can openly practice any discriminatory policies, with regard to selection, training, development, appraisal etc. A demanding ethical challenge arises when there is pressure on the HR manager to protect the firm or an individual at the expense of someone belonging to the group which is being discriminated against.

Safety and Health:

✓Industrial work is often hazardous to the safety and health of the employees. Legislations have been created making it mandatory on the organisations and managers to compensate the victims of occupational hazards. Ethical dilemmas of HR managers arise when the justice is denied to the victims by the organisation.

Unethical Practices in HRM:

Harassment:

✓Harassment is making difficulties to the employee to work or perform his duties. Harassment tactics are resorted by the bosses or co-workers with ulterior motives. Harassment in a work place is common to take revenge or to make a worker humiliation in his work place or living areas.

EG:TCS 

Harassed in Workplace by the Manager’

✓In her complaint, the woman employee has alleged that the manager had demanded sexual favours by summoning her to a room in UK .Later  she filed a case against him kanachepuram court .where the manager went behind the bars .

✓69 women report harassment cases in Infosys during FY 18-19

Polygraph Testing:

✓Polygraph and psychological tests are done by some executives to prevent and detect crime in the work place and this is violation of employee rights.

These tests to be avoided as:

1)They are not reliable or valid and are at best indicators.

2) Test results, to some extent can be manipulated by the operator.

3) The tests may include irrelevant questions pertaining to a person’s privacy.

Ethics in finance:

Accuracy

✓A company’s financial manager ensures that all financial publications accurately and fairly reflect the financial condition of the company. Accounting errors and financial fraud, such as what was seen in the cases of Enron and WorldCom, damage the interests of shareholders, employees and affect confidence in the financial system. Some organizations document ethics guidelines specifically for financial managers. For example, the ethics code of the United States Postal Service requires senior financial managers to maintain accurate records and books, maintain internal controls and prepare financial documents in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

Transparency:

✓Financial documents reflect a company's performance relative to its peers, and its internal strengths and weaknesses. Regulatory agencies require publicly traded companies to submit periodic financial statements and make full disclosures of material information. A change in the senior executive ranks, buyout offers, loss or win of a major contract and new product launches are examples of material information. Transparency also means explaining financial information clearly, especially for those who aren't familiar with the company’s operations. Financial managers should not hide, obscure or otherwise render relevant financial information impossible for ordinary shareholders to understand.

Unethical Practices in Finance:

Banking:

✓Punjab National Bank Scam: A major banking fraud was uncovered in the Punjab National Bank in 2018 in which several senior officials were found to be involved. Estimated to be worth over Rs 13,000 crore, the scam has been dubbed as the biggest fraud in India's banking history. PNB officials filed a complaint with the CBI against three companies and four people that included Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, claiming they had defrauded the bank and caused a loss of Rs 280 crore, but revised it later to more than  Rs13,000 crore.

Investors:

✓Satyam Scam: A major IT company of that time, Satyam was found to have inflated the revenue of the company through false sales invoices and showed corresponding gains by forging the bank statements. The stock prices of the company soared due to this which helped it raise over Rs2,700 crore. The annual financial statements of the company with inflated revenue were published for several years and this lead to higher price of the stocks in the markets. In the process, innocent investors were lured to invest in the company.

Ethics in marketing:

product policy:

✓A strategic rule or rules covering how a good or service is promoted to potential consumers. A typical product policy created by a business for a manufactured product might attempt to manage how the item will be perceived by its target market and could also contain information about how durable the product is.

Pricing in Marketing:

✓ Pricing is the method of determining the value a producer will get in the exchange of goods and services. Simply, pricing method is used to set the price of producer’s offerings relevant to both the producer and the customer.

Unethical  in marketing

Surrogate Advertisements:

✓McDowell’s No. 1 Soda,  which plays on the themes of friendship and brotherhood. While the content of this advertisement is admirable for its sensitivity towards the differently abled, it also masterfully manipulates its viewers into associating the brand name with true friendship or yaari. The tagline “Celebrate Responsibly” points towards the fact that it’s not really soda that’s for sale here.

False advertising:

✓Wal-Mart falsely advertised the price of Coke in New York.A different Wal-Mart Coke promotion Freebies2dealsWal-Mart agreed to pay more than $66,000 in fines, after over-charging customers from 117 stores in New York for Coca-Cola. The supermarket chain had advertised a nationwide sale on the soft drink in 2014, where 12-packs would cost just $3.oo.

However, customers in New York State were charged $3.50. Wal-Mart staff allegedly lied about the reasons for the price-hike, telling customers that New York has a "sugar tax," according to Corporate Crime Reporter.