Corporate Responsibility and Whistle Blowing

This report discusses the concept of corporate responsibility and the role of whistle blowing in maintaining ethical practices within organizations. It explores recent corporate scandals and their impact on brand reputation. The report also examines the influence of education on preventing corporate scandals. It delves into the ethical theories behind whistle blowing and its significance in promoting public interest. Additionally, it provides insights into organizational policies for protecting whistle blowers.

Social Responsibility
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CONTENTS
Contents...........................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
PART 1: ESSAY ON CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY.............................................................3
PART 2: ESSAY ON WHISTLE BLOWING................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9
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INTRODUCTION
Corporate social responsibility is defined as the self-regulatory system which aims toward
accomplishing the societal goals related with the activist, philanthropic or charitable nature by
supporting the volunteering as well as ethics oriented practices. This support an organisation to
operates its business by performing moral duties as well as responsibilities toward the welfare of
society, environment and stakeholders among which the organisation actually operates (Ferrell
and et. al., 2019). This project consider the APS group Ltd which is a SME organisation that
offer its services to brand by allowing them to interact with its customers using marketing,
technology and print experts along with creative, film professional and digital professionals all
work together. This study contains a discussion regarding the corporate responsibility which is
essential to be performed along with a discussion about the influence od education failure over
increasing corporate scandal by taking example of current scandal cases. Other than this it also
have a discussion regarding the whistle blowing practices and manner it remain helpful in
promoting moral practices within an organisation.
PART 1: ESSAY ON CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
The corporate scandals are mainly occurs when their remains an evident of unethical
behaviour, third party interference or negligence which in turn directly affect the brand
reputation. These scandals can be related with the accounting, data breach, dodgy business
practices or any thing which directly impact the society or environment. In todays busines world
the corporate scandals are increasing day by day with the increasing race of reaching at top
within the industry (Wymer and Rundle-Thiele, 2017). The high profile organisation which
claims to operate over ethics within business are also found to be involve in unethical practices
which get disclosed with the scandals done by them.
This can be seen with the big scandal performed by Apple Inc. in year 2017 which was
about the battery gate which was actually started when the Reddit user reported that the new
software update within iPhone has reduced its speed but it gets corrected when the battery get
replaced. This was actually a strategy of company where they are actually forcing the users for
upgrading by the deliberately slowing of devices. After the media coverage it was being cleared
with confirmation that the software was actually designed in have the throttle performance but
claimed that the intent was only for reducing the issues of unexpected shutdown that in turn may
affect the devices that are still running at old batteries. But on the other side company is also
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offering discount on battery replacement in term of gesture of goodwill for those that gey
affected. This was one of the biggest scandal of year 2017 which in turn affected the goodwill as
well as trust of the company in front of its customers. As a result of which its share also fall once
the scandal get disclosed in front of public (Hisrich and Ramadani, 2017). Therefore, the APS
group ltd must also focuses toward maintain its operations in ethical manner and should consider
the welfare of people through its services by avoiding the practices that harm the interest of
customers in any manner. The APS group, while marketing about a particular brand then it must
ensure that they deliver right information to customers and do not involve in any unethical
practice by adding some information that are not real just to attract people and for the increasing
the profitability of brand. Rather it must provide with information that is fair, true and must done
good for all the stakeholder instead of benefiting a single entity.
On the other side, another case of a corporate can be seen which is involve in scandal is
Facebook when the New York Times and Guardian reported that an organisation named as
Global Science Research has harvested data from Facebook of millions of people without any
explicit consent (Freeman and Dmytriyev, 2017). This become possible as the previous version
of privacy policy was actually allow the apps to access the data about the user’s friends. Hence
the global Science Research has gathered this data and later on sold to Cambridge Analytica
which uses this to create targeted ads for encouraging the users to vote for Trump and Brexit.
This was an ethical conduct which affected the brand reputation of Facebook throughout the
world and also affected the customer trust and confidence within brand as a result of which its
market share also get dropped at very low rate as company involve in unethical practice. Hence
from this, the APS group Ltd must take a lesson and should try to work more over its internal
management as well as enhancing the security over its online transaction that it made while
interacting with client. This is so because maintaining the privacy and authenticity of the client
remain crucial for the organisation as it is ethical and at the same time help in developing a trust
among the organisation and its stakeholders (Manasakis, 2018). As the APS is responsible for
offering range of services that uses online platform to interact with its customers so it become a
moral duty of organisation to ensure that the private information that its client share must be kept
secure and remain un-accessible to the unauthorised users.
As per the information gathers from the Academy of Management Learning & Education
2005 under the topic Bad management Theories are Destroying Good Management Practices it
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has been found that corporate scandal within United State have stimulated a Frenzy of activities
within the business schools throughout the world. Now several of the business schools are trying
to add more learning about ethics in business within their curriculum and new courses are now
being developed over the corporate social responsibilities. Along with this the old ethical courses
which proved wrong with the increasing scandal has also being started rewritten as per the
current scenario going on within the industry as well as increasing scandals among the high
profile organisations throughout the world (Ghoshal, 2005). But the business schools are not
required to do so rather they just have to change some theories and concepts which are not much
related with ethical practices. This is so because many of the worst excesses of recent
management practices got their root within the ideas that actually emerged from business school
academics from last 30 years.
As from this the corporate governance grounded within the agency theory where the
students are being taught that the managers can not be trusted to do their job that they work for
maximising the shareholder value and for overcoming the agency problem. Hence the manager
interest and incentives must be aligned by the organisation with that of shareholders. Other than
this within these management courses it is also being taught that the organisation design is
grounded within the transaction cost economics where the students are being teach that there
remain a need for tight monitoring and control among people for preventing the opportunistic
behaviour. These theories are actually being taught from years about the characteristics of a
manger and manner in which they must act or treat the employees to keep the operations on
track. This is turn somewhere affecting the ethical practices adopted by businesses which not
always goes with the organisational ethics and over this it can be said that the failure of
educational system can also be a reason behind increasing corporate scandal (Ghoshal, 2005).
This can be seen clearly with the scandal of apple incorporation where the software is being
offered to customers to enhance the speed as well as functioning of their devices but at the same
time they are forcing indirectly to customer for upgrading their system with this software which
remain unsupported with the old battery. Hence they are selling the services but at the cost of
replacement of battery which was unethical. From this it can be said that the root of such kind of
unethical practices remains somewhere within the educational system failure.
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PART 2: ESSAY ON WHISTLE BLOWING
Whistleblowing is a term which is mainly used for a person who passes the information
about something wring going on within workplace. This person is considered to be closely
associated with the organisation that can be an employee or sometimes the supplier or customer
of the company (Vandekerckhove and Phillips, 2019). They actually become a whistle blower
when they observe some actions which they consider to be illegal, misconduct or far from
company’s code of conduct. Some of the common things which are consider as ground of whistle
blowing are a criminal offense such as fraud or corruption, serious form of discrimination or
harassment, actual damage made to environment, company is breaking any law etc. The Whistle
blowing is considered to be a debated issue as it help in revealing as well as exposing the
unethical secrets which a company mainly involve (Kenny, Fotaki and Vandekerckhove, 2020).
The whistle blowing is mainly performed by the employees of an organisation itself but it
actually creates the situation of dilemma for the concerned employee. This process takes the
informer under several responsibilities as hey are often consider as the centre of investigation
and also being asked for revealing about the problematic area which make it sometimes difficult
for the people to disclose information regarding the unethical cases.
As per the government of UK, a whistle blower must disclose the wrong doing that must
be in favour of public interest i.e. its disclosure must bring interest to other people. The whistle
blower remain protected by law and an organisation is not liable to treat that whistle blower
unfairly or force them to leave the job. Hence, the main motive of whistle blowing is to disclose
the wrong doing that may harm the interest of general public (Whistleblowing for employees.
2020). This can be better understood with the help of Utilitarianism theory. According to the
information presented by Bosupeng. M., 2017, an action must be performed which bring the
greatest benefit to larger number of people. Additionally, this theory said that an information or
disclosure that brings up more good outcome must be performed, while on the other side if the
disclosure of any information that may bring negative consequence to the general public must
not be disclosed as it remains harmful to the people. Like, any information that may leads to
soaring unemployment then such kind of action must not be taken as it not remains in favour of
benefit to other people and as per the UK government guidelines it is not consider as the whistle
blowing.
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On the other side, deontology is also an ethical theory which is based on belief that one
performs act for fulfilling the desire then such action won’t be consider as a moral motive. For
this the Immanuel Kant also presented some formulas like “act so that one will be the maxim of
action for becoming a universal law” and another formula is “act in a manner so that one never
be treat another rational being merely as mean”. This theory suggests that an individual firstly
consider their action and then determine whether they can take toward the universal principle or
law. Hence it can be said that this theory actually solves the short comes involve within the
utilitarianism (Whistle Blowing: What Do Contemporary Ethical Theories Say, 2017). As the
utilitarianism theory was concerned with outcome only while on the other side the deontology is
based on the universalising one’s action. Therefore, it can be said that Whistle blower must
consider the fact that the information which is disclosed by them must brings up benefit to the
people and remain acceptable by the public i.e. remain in their favour.
According to the information shared by Tsahuridu. E. Vandekerckhove. W., 2008, the
increasing focus on ethics as well as ethical behaviour within the organisation get a greater
concern regarding the whistle blowers as well as their protection. There ae mainly two type of
extreme position within the discourse on whistle blowing that appears to be the whistle blowing
legislation as well as organisational policies which aims toward enabling the individual
responsible and creating the moral autonomy at work. This in turn help in protecting the
organisation by making it allow to control the employees and at the same time make them liable
for maintaining the ethics at work.
On other hand, MacDougall. D. R., 2015, the organisations that maintain its performance
to be socially responsible are always remain their to call for whistle blowers who can expose the
things that are going wrong and unethical within the organisation. Other than this they also focus
toward creating several organisational policies related with the security of the whistle blowers so
that an employees can freely disclose the information that remain in the favour of the
organisation without harming the people who take initiative to disclose the information for the
welfare of others. Despite of this there are multitude of ways within which an organisation can
deal with the ethical problems as well as wrong doing which mainly includes the formulation of
policies which encourage employees and providing the protection for the whistle blowers. This
mainly includes certain policies that remain effective and helpful when it gets utilised for
encouraging the employees to report the manager about the wrong doing happening within the
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organisation. Hence it can be said that the organisation who are socially responsible and operates
over ethics mainly encourage employees to maintain their work ethically and report if anything
happens wrong within the organisation that remains ethically inappropriate.
CONCLUSION
From the above performed report it can be summarised that the ethics and code of
conduct are consider to be a significant part of business success as it help business in performing
the operations effectively which provide benefit to all. But as the scandal related with corporate
houses are increased throughout the world it has been found that its root are being created within
the failure of education system. This is so because it has been taught within the business schools
that managers work for increasing the shareholder value and for better performance a struct
management and control system should be there within organisation to keep employees align
with objective. These all conclude with the fact that each actions to be taken where the profit of
shareholder must increase and at the same time employees must be monitored by managers to
produce maximum outcome. All these give birth to the unethical practices where the employees
are treated like a machine and at the same time several unethical actions are taken to enhance the
profitability of organisation.
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Organisational
Whistleblowing
Policies:
Making
Employees
Responsible or
Liable?
REFERENCES
Books & Journals
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Ferrell, O.C. and et. al., 2019. Business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and brand
attitudes: An exploratory study. Journal of Business Research, 95, pp.491-501.
Freeman, R.E. and Dmytriyev, S., 2017. Corporate social responsibility and stakeholder theory:
Learning from each other. Symphonya. Emerging Issues in Management, (1), pp.7-15.
Ghoshal, S. 2005. Bad management theories are destroying good management practices.
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4: 75-91
Hisrich, R.D. and Ramadani, V., 2017. Business Ethics, Social Responsibility and
Entrepreneurial Managers. In Effective entrepreneurial management (pp. 179-201).
Springer, Cham.
Kenny, K., Fotaki, M. and Vandekerckhove, W., 2020. Whistleblower subjectivities:
Organization and passionate attachment. Organization Studies, 41(3), pp.323-343.
Manasakis, C., 2018. Business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Managerial and
Decision Economics, 39(4), pp.486-497.
Vandekerckhove, W. and Phillips, A., 2019. Whistleblowing as a protracted process: A study of
UK whistleblower journeys. Journal of Business Ethics, 159(1), pp.201-219.
Wymer, W. and Rundle-Thiele, S.R., 2017. Inclusion of ethics, social responsibility, and
sustainability in business school curricula: a benchmark study. International Review on
Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 14(1), pp.19-34.
Online
Bosupeng. M., 2017. Whistle Blowing: What Do Contemporary Ethical Theories Say? [Online]
Available through:
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316714965_Whistle_Blowing_What_Do_Co
ntemporary_Ethical_Theories_Say>.
MacDougall. D. R., 2015. Whistleblowing: Don’t Encourage It, Prevent It. [Online] Available
through: <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4770925/>.
Tsahuridu. E. Vandekerckhove. W., 2008. Organisational whistleblowing policies: Making
Employees Responsible or Liable? [Online] Available through:
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5149321_Organisational_Whistleblowing_P
olicies_Making_Employees_Responsible_or_Liable>.
Whistleblowing for employees. 2020. [Online] Available through:<
https://www.gov.uk/whistleblowing>.
Organisational
Whistleblowing
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Policies:
Making
Employees
Responsible or
Liable?
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