Business Ethics and Sustainability: A Report on Diversity Issues

This report delves into the ethical issues surrounding diversity in the modern business environment. It identifies key challenges such as religious variances, gender issues, and biases in hiring decisions, emphasizing the importance of creating a respectful and inclusive workplace. The report highlights how cultural differences can lead to conflicts and the need for companies to address these issues while adhering to anti-discrimination laws. A mitigation strategy is proposed, including involving top management, adapting organizational structures, constant communication, and forming a project plan. The report concludes by stressing the significance of diversity as a core value and the need for companies to proactively manage the ethical challenges it presents to foster a more inclusive and successful business environment. The report uses several academic references to support its arguments.

Business Ethics and sustainability

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Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Ethical issue...........................................................................................................................................2
Mitigation strategy................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................4
References.............................................................................................................................................5

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Introduction
The organizations face several ethical issues in the intricate international corporate
environment of the twenty-first century. The businesses are having accountability to advance
codes of demeanor and ethics which every individual of the association should stand by and
put into the action. The ultimate ethical issues faced by the companies comprise endorsing
conduct based on integrity. More intricate issues faced by the companies contain obliging
diversity, vicarious decision making and acquiescence and governance reliable with the core
values of the organization.
Ethical issue
The companies face ethical issues in the business environment on a regular basis. The current
ethical issue faced by the companies is concerning ‘diversity and respectful workplace’. The
present and existing workers of the company are deliberated to be a varied pool of persons
and justify to have their differences appreciated when they decide to work in the association.
An ethical retort to diversity is likely, to begin with employing a diverse staff and imposing
equal *prospect in all the training programs. The employees enjoy working in a workplace
and contribute values when they get a respectful working environment (Bertrand and
Lumineau, 2016). The organizations are also likely to attain success when the value
contribution of each employee is maximized.
The diversity issue is faced in the companies due to:
Religious variances: A culturally varied staff in the organization comprise persons with
diverse religious views. Sometimes it happens when a worker’s spiritual beliefs bang with the
diversity rules of the organization. For instance, a diverse organization salutes workers,
sellers, and clienteles of diverse sexual alignments. Such enclosure can stance a moral
problem for the workers who are having religion-based credence that heterosexuality is the
only adequate sexual alignment. The companies are required to address such issues and
ensure the personal beliefs of the employees are respected at the workplace (Marfelt and
Muhr, 2016).
Gender issues: Diversity issues are also faced in the form of gender. An organization offering
the same opportunities to women for promotion can result in the creation of different ethical
challenges by men. It has been experienced that women are legitimately lesser to men in
some nations. Both male and female employees from such nations discover it tough to

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regulate in the diverse and comprehensive work atmosphere where men account to women
and women inhabit top administrative designations. Add on, some beliefs deliberate it corrupt
for women and men who are not associated with each other to guise into each other’s eye and
cooperate with each other communally and professionally (Trittin and Schoeneborn, 2017).
The businesses are required to address such cultural compassions without violating anti-
discrimination laws or falling the efficacy of multiplicity ingenuities.
Hiring decisions: An association desiring to have a culturally varied staff should recruit from
the varied group of applicants. The company can generate interest among the diverse groups
by posting open positions with worker multiplicity networks and by advertising job openings.
A company can hire most capable individuals for the position irrespective of gender, race,
age or national basis. A hiring decision made in the environment which values multiplicity
can generate strain between multiplicity goals and equal employ prospect rules of the
association (Barak, Findler and Wind, 2016).
Business practices: A company experiences cultural conflict when it insists on following
ethical business conducts by the employees. In some cultures, representatives anticipate
organizations to offer incentive payments to accelerate the consent of desires like permit and
discrepancy applications. The government can see such payments as bribe which are
proscribed by federal anti-corruption laws. Desecration of the laws by the employees can
result in criminal liability and civil fines (Jonsen, Schneider and Maznevski, 2016). A
company can offer anti-bribery training to the personnel to elucidate the ways to grip appeals
for the aids so that personnel belonging to all cultures can comprehend what is tolerable and
intolerable behavior under the act.
Mitigation strategy
The mitigation strategy has a great role in solving the ethical issue of diversity. The
companies are required to develop and implement a mitigation strategy. It can be helpful in
attracting and retaining the best global talent. The mitigation strategy can be helpful in
eradicating the differences in the organization on the foundation of color, race, belief, gender,
sexual orientation, age, and political association. The diversity issues can be solved in the
organization by undertaking the following steps:
 Involving the whole top management team: The senior leadership can be intricate in
the whole diversity project. The visionary speech is likely to have little impact
therefore CEO and higher management should be perceptible at the workshops,

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training programs and during question and answer sessions on the diversity (Ng and
Sears, 2018). A significant effort in showing the method is to execute diversity at
higher-level management.
 Adapt organizational structure: The organizational structure is required to assist
diversity effort. It can be made possible by forming a diversity office and executing a
chief diversity officer. When the organizational structure assists diversity offers then
it is anticipated to be taken seriously across the entire company (Andersen and
Moynihan, 2016).
 Communicate about the initiative on a constant basis: Communicating about the
significance of diversity for the effectiveness of the company is greatly important.
The communication should be copious and comprise several channels like
newsletters, intranet, social media, meetings, seminars, posters and more.
 Forming a formal project plan: Forming a project plan to assist a diversity strategy
with the assessable objectives. Such objectives are incorporated with the
organization’s objectives and operations (Ferdman, 2018). It has been experienced
that if such a project is not deliberately planned in advance by using tested and
automation procedures then the serious elements will not attain proper devotion.
 Change all Human Resource (HR) initiatives to comprise diversity: An organization
should deliberate a way to reach the extensive pool through initiatives like
communication, encouragement, awards, retention programs and hike in pay.
Conclusion
Diversity is the component of every organization and is one of the important ethical issues
which has turned into a losing situation and has led to the demoralization of the organization.
Although the companies nowadays have incorporated cultural diversity ingenuities with the
aim of forming a comprehensive workplace environment. Though, cultural diversity gives
intensification to ethical issues which can be stimulating for the managers and workers to
resolve.

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References
Andersen, S.C. and Moynihan, D.P., 2016. How leaders respond to diversity: The moderating
role of organizational culture on performance information use. Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory, 26(3), pp.448-460.
Barak, M.E.M., Findler, L. and Wind, L.H., 2016. Diversity, inclusion, and commitment in
organizations: International empirical explorations. Journal of Behavioral and Applied
Management, 2(2), p.813.
Bertrand, O. and Lumineau, F., 2016. Partners in crime: The effects of diversity on the
longevity of cartels. Academy of Management Journal, 59(3), pp.983-1008.
Ferdman, B.M., 2018. Incorporating Diversity and Inclusion as Core Values in Organization
Development Practice. In Enacting Values-Based Change (pp. 157-167). Palgrave
Macmillan, Cham.
Jonsen, K., Schneider, S.C. and Maznevski, M.L., 2016. Diversity–A strategic issue?.
In Diversity in the workplace (pp. 49-81). Routledge.
Marfelt, M.M. and Muhr, S.L., 2016. Managing protean diversity: An empirical analysis of
how organizational contextual dynamics derailed and dissolved global workforce
diversity. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 16(2), pp.231-251.
Ng, E.S. and Sears, G.J., 2018. Walking the talk on diversity: CEO beliefs, moral values, and
the implementation of workplace diversity practices. Journal of Business Ethics, pp.1-14.
Trittin, H. and Schoeneborn, D., 2017. Diversity as polyphony: Reconceptualizing diversity
management from a communication-centered perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 144(2),
pp.305-322.