Organizational Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Organizational Ethics - Essay Example Businesses that operate ethically are assumed to have a lot of gains but it is not as simple as it sounds especially in an ever increasingly competitive environment. The leader has to make sure all the stockholder’s interests are taken care of and at the same time ensure all laws are adhered to and also act according to moral principles. The problem is; does the leader do what is right according to his or her opinion or what is right according to the moral standards of society? Sometimes these two views conflict and the leader have to make this important decision. This becomes more complex as the company becomes global due to diversity of cultures. Morality according to Fieser and Moseley (2012) guides what is permitted and what is not or what is â€Å"right† and what is â€Å"wrong†. However, it all depends on what moral theory one is applying. Understanding business ethics is important and as such this paper will focus on how various companies solve their ethic al dilemmas. This will be accomplished by using an example of a profit organization (Google) and a non-profit organization (United Service Organizations). First, the paper will give the profiles of both companies and the ethical issues they faced or are currently facing. Secondly, personal reflections on the ethical actions taken by the companies will be evaluated. This will be followed by a critique of these actions taken based on philosophical theories. Lastly, a brief summary of the main issues will be given. Company Profile: Google Google Inc is a global leader in the technology sector specializing in the search engine industry. It was founded and incorporated in 1998 by Larry Page and his co-founder Sergy Brin. It is a profit making organization whose mission is â€Å"to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful† (Google.com, 2013). It operates more than 70 offices situated in more than 60 countries and an employee base of more than 30,000 employees worldwide. Its headquarters are situated in Mountain View, California with various branches in the US, Asia Pacific, Africa, Europe, Latin America, United Arab Emirates, and Canada. It is a global company that offers services to both people and businesses. It is involved in offering search services, advertising, and cloud computing for businesses by offering products such as AdWords, AdSense, Google maps, blog searches, Gmail, scholarly papers, books, mobile content, chrome and translation. It started as a small company in a garage but through the years it has developed to become a dominant player in the search engine industry. This is through its aggressive acquisition strategy and new product developments (Google.com, 2013). The company derives its revenue mainly from advertising, websites, and hardware products. All these revenues are acquired through hard work as entailed in the company’s value statement â€Å"don’t be evil† (Google.co m). It has been experiencing a revenue and profit growth over the years as shown in the table 1 below. USD 2009 2010 2011 2012 Total Revenue 23650.56 29321.00 37905.00 50175.00 Gross profit 14806.45 18904.00 24717.00 29670.00 Table 1: Annual Data extracted from Google financial Reports. Most of this revenue comes from advertising and it is far above its competitors in the same industry such as Microsoft, eBay, Face Book, and Apple. Its sales growth of 15.48% year on year is above competitor’s average revenue growth of 6.45% according to CSIMarket (2013). The revenue growth of the various companies year on year is: Google 15.48%; Apple Inc 0.86%; eBay 14.1 %; Microsoft 10.17% and Yahoo Inc -5.22%. From these statistics, it is evident that