BUS301: Ethical Dilemma and Proposed Solutions - Devil's Den Report

This BUS301 capstone project first progress report examines an ethical dilemma at Devil's Den, a campus bar, focusing on issues of corporate culture and employee behavior. The report identifies unethical practices, such as employee misuse of resources and lack of managerial oversight, and analyzes their implications, including financial losses and erosion of ethical standards. It discusses the absence of a clearly defined corporate culture and ethical guidelines, which contributed to the issues. The report proposes solutions, including clear communication, the establishment of written ethical standards, and the promotion of ethical decision-making among employees. The analysis considers the roles of student employees, student managers, and the core management team in the ethical context. The project draws on relevant literature to support the analysis and suggests strategies to foster a more ethical and responsible business environment.

Running head: BUS301
Ethical dilemma faced by Devil’s Den
Capstone Project –First progress report
Name:
Course:

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
First: The ethical complications at the organisation..................................................................3
Second: The implications regarding the problem......................................................................5
Third: Proposed Solutions to these issues..................................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
Reference List............................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
The culture of corporate business should play a key role in enabling the upcoming
generations of leaders in business operations. The business culture accounts for a 20 to 30%
difference in the performance of the various organisations. A good organisational culture is
reflected by a set of well-set vision, organisational values, and good practices pertaining to
which the employees can develop their basic skills, people who render some core business
value to the generation or are capable of incorporating those values and fair working
environment.
The following report highlights the necessity of corporate culture and the alignment to
ethical behaviour with valid implications to the case of the Devil’s Den bar. The ethical
dilemma have been identified along with the implications and the solutions that have been
provided.
First: The ethical complications at the organisation
Business culture is referred to the collective programming of the mind-set of people,
differentiating one from another as opined by Adams (2017), and reflected by (Bjorge and
Whittaker 2015). The essential cultural aspects include the process of effectively
communicating the organisational objectives, values, policies of the organisation and the
goals. The workers of the organisation should be enticed to participate in discussions
regarding social events of the organisation, a bout work-life balance and establish an
ambience of friendship between the co-workers (Borsen and Nielsen 2017). The construction
of such ideal work is prioritised by all the researchers. It is essential to consider how the
employee’s ethical values can be communicated with that of the corporate values preserved
by the organisation. The conflicts in the internal environment of the company arise when the
differences arise.

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In concern to the case regarding dilemma at the devil’s Den, evidently it can be
observed how the different in the individual cultures of the employees can create a disruption
that affects the stakeholders. The same conflict surfaced during the time when Suzan, the
business school student faced a similar dilemma in the ethical context, while serving at a
snacks bar in the campus as a part of her part time job. The workplaces he served comprised
of 30 staff all of whom were the students serving as part time workers (CNBC. 2015). Other
than that there were also 6 student managers who served as student managers. All these part
time employees were appointed by an external agency named “College Food Services”. The
dilemma arose with the issue that these student employees consumed a lot of free food
themselves and also allowed their friends to do the same or at a nominal price. The
employees could follow this practice due to the absence of some of a written regulatory
framework and the poor managerial skills of the student managers. As an outcome, Suzan
whole individual culture is different, cannot tolerate such unethical practices of her
colleagues and helplessly remains silent. She discovered that the storage of the bar’s storage
was unlocked and as an outcome provided uninterrupted entry to anyone. Besides, Coleman,
(2013), states that the students worked at the bar at very low wage and the student managers
were also not competent at all. Suzan could somewhat justify the perspective from which the
employees performed their operations at the bar. However, as an outcome of this happening
regularly, the company incurred loss. The major reason of this outcome was the absence of a
clearly defined corporate culture and set of organisational values that ensures loyalty of
employees, taking up responsibility and respecting organisational norms. Suzan had a single
opportunity of ending this indiscipline by communicating with manager Mark who had the
liability of dealing with unethical behaviour of employees (Feng, 2017).
The process of corporate reporting is an essential managerial tool. The
implementation of this process and a sound organisational management process creates

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values in the organisation and also creates an awareness among the stakeholders about the
business risks. This tool is used as non-financial process of reporting which manipulates
management’s decisions.
Second: The implications regarding the problem
In the words of Johnson and Cohen (2004), the ethics manager of the company, Bill
should take certain steps to assure the undertaking of ethical behaviour by the student
employees. These are:
i) Identifying the rampant misuse of the resources of the storages and the consequent benefits
that the employee have been drawing and foreseeing unintended risks.
ii) Linking the intended actions, misuse, the adverse effects as well as their cultural
implications with related ethical standards (Patel and Rayner 2015).
iii) To understand the ethical dilemma related to the activities of the students
iv) Formulation of written ethical standards and depiction of proper culture and methods of
performance evaluation.
Ethical standards have a crucial role to play in this context. As per the theory of
Common sense morality, the maintenance of business ethics is dependent on the context of
business, whereby the individual choose to act independently just as he/she supposes to be
the most ethical way of addressing conflicting business contexts. The terminology “common
sense” relates to the capability of a person to analyse a particular situation based on the
acquired information (Yugo, 2009). Accordingly, Suzan is seen to encounter the
confrontation between what she sees and believes. She considers the after effects of
communicating with Bill regarding the unethical approaches of the student employees and
decides against speaking up. There is no official system to encourage the employees who are

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up to taking corrective actions to support the company. Suzan have the prospect of becoming
a new student manager recently and this promotion depends upon the appraisal of her
colleagues. Hence if she speaks against them, her promotion would be at stake. The
student managers are also affected by this, since they are not appropriately trained and they
also practice the unethical behaviour like others. The core management team of the company
have a passive role in this context as they might be ignorant of this unethical culture or might
have undermined it (Patel and Rayner 2015).
Third: Proposed Solutions to these issues
All these aforementioned issues imply that a value system is lacking and needs to be
resurrected. As per Feng (2017), Hostede’s model implies that social values are valid in a
context of legal rights as well as corporate governance. Three options are open to Suzxan.
The first is communicating with Mark about the issue. The other one is resigning and the
third one is ignoring whatever unethical practices that she witnesses.
Conclusion
The student managers’ weak supervision and the opportunity of the lack of written regulatory
standards facilitated the conduction unethical business practice. Conclusively Den witnessed
a financial loss and had to pay the price of missing out having clear culture and values that
ensure loyalty of workers. The ethics of behaviour within an organisation depends on the
individual and depends on the independent decisions of the employee since he or she
conducts what seems ethical at that moment.

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Reference List
Adams, C. (2017). Conceptualising the contemporary corporate value creation process.
Accounting, ******iting & Accountability Journal, 30(4), 906-931.
Bjorge, A., & Whittaker, S. (2015). Corporate values: A linguistic approach. International
Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 15(3), 347–362.
Borsen, T., & Nielsen, S. (2017). Applying an ethical judgment model to the case of DDT.
International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, 23, 5-27.
CNBC. (2015, May 22). Chipotle serves up the American dream. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDn4zFWD4TE
Coleman, J. (2013, May 06). Six components of a great corporate culture. Retrieved from
HBR Webinar: https://hbr.org/2013/05/six-components-of-culture
Feng, M. (2017). National societal values and corporate governance. International Journal of
Emerging Markets, 12(2), 183-198.
Johnson, K., & Cohen, A. (2004). Dilemma at Devil's Den. Retrieved from Brain Mass:
https://brainmass.com/file/******/den364.pdf
Patel, T., & Rayner, S. (2015). A transactional culture analysis of corporate sustainability
reporting practices: Six examples from India. Business & Society, 54(3), 283–321.
Yugo, J. (2009). The corporate culture survival guide. Business Communication Quarterly,
75(2), 228-231.