Lack Of Effective Organisational Factors

Running Head:ROLE OF ETHICS IN CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS
ROLE OF ETHICS IN CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS
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1ROLE OF ETHICS IN CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS
Ethics is considered to be one of the major aspects for the business organisations to
maintain a sustainable business orientation in the market (Pearson 2017). It becomes a pertinent
measure for the business companies because the customers are highly aware of transparency in
business and its relation with the interests of the customers. In other words, it can be stated that
the customers of modern times are liked to prefer brands that are ethically sound. In response to
this, the essay is going to identify the role of ethics in corporate communications (Chaudhri
2016). The given case study is associated with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 disaster in 2016. The
essay tries to develop an in-depth analysis over the incident and its aftermath that can prove
whether Samsung successfully followed the ethical protocols in communicating both internally
and externally. Furthermore, a personal reflection will also be addressed in the essay.
The disaster was led by a number of contributing factors that were easily influenced the
effective business orientation of Samsung. There are both the lack of effective organisational
factors and technological inefficacies that were solely responsible for the disaster. Form the
report of Mozur (2017) it can be derived that the primary cause of the malfunctioning of the
batteries planted within the mobile phones but there were larger picture on the backdrop of the
disaster in terms of the organisational indecisions and the technical inaccuracies. For instance,
Lopez (2017) stated that the rivalry between Apple and Samsung pushed Samsung to launch its
Galaxy 7 in a hurry before Apple rolled out iPhone 7. It caused lack of monitoring and control
over the manufacturing of Note7. Another important aspect was the inefficacy in the technical
aspect where design malfunctioning was played the role of a catalyst.
There are five core values of Samsung in terms of people, change, integrity, excellence
and co-prosperity. As a matter of fact, the code of conduct policy of Samsung also incorporates
some business principles and commitments like to comply with the ethical standards, to respect,

2ROLE OF ETHICS IN CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS
customers, maintains a clean organisational culture and care about environment, health and
safety (samsung.com 2016). However, in reality there were no efforts from the organisation to
meet any of the values or commitment. According to Mozur (2017) it was sheer corporate
competition that initiated the disaster in 2016. The organisation did not follow its policies and
ethics properly otherwise it would never stake customers’ lives in danger. As a matter of fact,
during the crisis situation there were also partial representations of the ethical gesture from
Samsung where the organisation is trying to roll back Note 7 from the market (bbc.com 2017).
Nevertheless, in the initial press meeting the management failed to address the exact reason
behind it because they were so busy in the corporate competition that they did not care about the
standard and safety of its customers (News.samsung.com 2016). Customers were getting
paranoid and confused about the issue and the Samsung management tried to avoid its direct
responsibility in the disaster. In such crisis situation, it was highly important for the senior
management to make a press announcement of the situation and gave direction to the customers
to avoid further calamity. As a matter of fact, the press release would also addressed to other
stakeholders so that they could get a transparent picture of the chaos.
From the discussion, it can be stated that there were some serious violations of ethical
and legal standards that Samsung should be followed throughout its business operation. In
response to this, there are some key principles of ethical communication that has to be identified.
For instance, transparency is identified as one of the major features of ethical communication
standards. As per the research of Duthler. and Dhanesh (2018) the ethical communication
standard is attached with honesty and consistent responsibility so that it will be effective for the
organisation to follow the principles of ethical communication. On the other hand, Roberts-
Lombard et al. (2019) pointed out that ethical communication allows the person to deliver the