C717 - Business Ethics: Employee Rights and Ethical Responsibilities

This report addresses business ethics within a marketing firm context, focusing on employee rights and responsibilities, as well as employer ethical responsibilities. It examines a hypothetical ethical dilemma involving customer interactions and evaluates the situation using utilitarian and relativism theories to guide ethical decision-making. The report further explores potential ethical decisions an employee might face, justifying these decisions in relation to ethical frameworks and company policies. Ultimately, the report emphasizes the importance of ethical conduct for long-term business success. Desklib provides access to similar assignments and study tools.

Running ha
Marketing
Business Ethics

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Employee rights and responsibility.................................................................................................2
Employer ethical responsibility.......................................................................................................2
Ethical Dilemma..............................................................................................................................2
Dilemma Evaluation........................................................................................................................3
Ethical decision................................................................................................................................4
Justification......................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
Bibliography....................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
The report is prepared on the subject ‘Business Ethics’ in response to the given scenario.
Business ethics are the pre-determined moral duties and principles that provide guidance to the
business operations (George, 2013). The basic purpose of the report is to provide reasonable
solutions to the queries raised from the situation. Moreover, it deals with the employee’s rights
and duties towards the organization. Additionally it also includes the employer ethical
responsibility towards the employee.
Employee rights and responsibility
1. In relation to the given scenario, it is the duty of new employees to abide by the ethical
business practices of the marketing firm to contribute to their pride.
2. They attain the responsibility of laying active participation in the ethical training as it is
developed for enhancing their knowledge with the ethical business practices.
Additionally, they have to oblige to the instructions given by the ethical officer and the
HR director. This will generate good impact of the firm towards the external consulting
firm.
3. To gain a proper understanding of the annual ethical training, they have the right to avail
the information from the ethical manager.
Employer ethical responsibility
1. It is the duty of the employer to provide the new employees with all the necessary
information of the corporate ethical practices. Additionally, he should examine that
employees are comfortable with the form of ethical training.
2. Moreover, he should try to develop interpersonal relationship with the fresh employee.
This practice will assist the employee’s, as they will free to raise their queries in the
training process.
Ethical Dilemma
In order to evaluate the understanding of the new employees towards marketing firm
ethical standards, a scenario is developed to present it to the employee’s.

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Scenario 1: Being a marketing firm, our employee’s also performs the function of
promotion. One of our employees was performing the similar role. He was promoting a
particular service/product of another company to their customer through telephone. In this
process, he realized that the customer was behaving abruptly. The customer was blaming our
marketing firm for poor past experience with the alternate company product/service
Scenario 2: In order to gain the customer satisfaction, the marketing firm negotiated
with the collaborated firm. Thus, marketing firm has assured the customer for product
replacement. However, it is asses that after providing the customer with the assurance, he/she
was still unhappy and raising issues for the poor past experience.
In relation to the ‘Scenario1’, the ethical dilemma for the new employee’s is to choose
between the two situations mentioned below:
 To respond to the same manner and marking the alternative firm as defaulter for poor
product experience.
 To calm the customer and make him/her believes that same experience will not repeat in
future. Moreover, it also includes assisting him to contact customer service department
for the settlement.
Dilemma Evaluation
In relation to the dilemma presented in ‘Scenario 1’, it is the duty of a marketing firm
employee to promote the alternative firm product/services to the customers of diverse nature.
Hence, employee must understand that the customer is neither right nor wrong during the
process. Moreover, it is reasonable that any consumer with poor past experience with the
product/service will show the similar response. It is the privilege of the same to raise the concern
faced.
As an ethical employee, one should follow the theory of Utilitarian and Relativism.
Utilitarian theory includes providing a helpful answer that promotes happiness (Mill, 2016). The
theory states that it should be performed in the absence of personal egoism (Sheng, 2012).
Similarly, employee should always tries to calm the customer as ‘customer is the king’ in the
market. Moreover, employee should provide a solution that makes the consumer content and

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pleased. Relativism theory laid emphasis on following the norms and morality of the
environment culture (Pearson, 2016). Moreover, it states that response of the situation depends
upon the conditions prevailing at the particular time (LaFollette, 2013). Similarly, marketing
firm focuses on adopting ethical practices in the business operations. Hence, being a part of an
ethical marketing firm, employee should follow the organization culture. Thus, employee must
deals with the customer through morality.
In relation to the above ethical theories, employee must provide faith to the customer as
same issue will not reoccur in future and instruct him to raise the query to the customer service
department but not to the promotion department. Lastly, it should be determined that employee
must not place a default on the customer or alternative company’s behalf but instead must hand
the concern to the customer care department.
Ethical decisions
After analyzing the ‘Scenario 1’ and ‘Scenario 2’, employee attains two ethical decisions
in the marketing firm:
1. The first ethical decision that employee should take is to offer more benefits to the
unhappy customer to attain customer satisfaction.
2. The second ethical decision that marketing firm employee should adopt is to save the
marketing firm cost by not providing any further benefits to the fateful customer.
Justification
In relation to the above ethical decisions, the first decision states that employees should
opt in an ethical way by providing the customer with more incentives to achieve the customer
satisfaction and saves poor ‘word of mouth’ in future. In relation to Utilitarian theory, it suggests
that employee should take decision that makes both the parties content (Sheng, 2012). The initial
decision of offering more incentives to the customer is suitable, as it will make the customer
content and thus saves the marketing firm from ‘poor word of mouth’ in future.
In the second decision, it is the ethical responsibility of the employee to save the
marketing firm cost. In relation to Relativism theory, it suggests that decision depends on the

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moral norms of the firm. However, similar decision can be inappropriate for other firms
(Pearson, 2016). Thus, the ethical decision of saving company’s cost by not providing future
incentives to the unhappy customer can be considerable in certain organizations only as the
decision depends upon the particular company policies and norms.
In order to justify the unethical behavior, employee must have the knowledge to
differentiate between acceptable behavior and unethical behavior. Employee should take the use
of ethics code to justify his/her concern. Employee should justify that professional association
does not allow concern practices behavior from the customer. They should clearly mention the
law broken and thus raise concern for the hurt caused as a victim (Stanwick & Stanwick, 2013).
Through such practice and evidences employee can successfully demonstrate unethical behavior.
Conclusion
The report summarize on the ‘Business Ethics’ in the workplace. It includes the
responsibility of the employees and employer towards each other. It also includes the dilemma
and its evaluation that can prove helpful in demonstrating employee understanding towards the
ethics. Additionally, it includes the reasonable ethical decisions for the employees. Lastly, it
concludes that business ethics is a responsible activity that has to fulfill to gain long-term success
in the market.

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Bibliography
Anastasia. (2015, February 6). Social Responsibility & Ethics in Marketing. Retrieved from
Cleverism : https://www.cleverism.com/social-responsibility-ethics-marketing/
George, R. T. (2013). Business ethics. Pearson Education India.
Inc. (2019, July 29). 17 Ways to Deal With Unhappy Customers. Retrieved from Inc:
https://www.inc.com/young-entrepreneur-council/17-ways-to-deal-with-unhappy-
customers.html
LaFollette, H. &. (2013). The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory. New Jersey: John Wiley &
Sons.
Mill, J. S. (2016). Utilitarianism. In Seven masterpieces of philosophy. United Kingdom:
Routledge.
Pearson, R. (2016). Beyond ethical relativism in public relations: Coorientation, rules, and the
idea of communication symmetry. In Public relations research annual . United Kingdom:
Routledge.
Sheng, C. (2012). A New Approach to Utilitarianism: A Unified Utilitarian Theory and Its
Application to Distributive Justice. Springer Science & Business Media.
Stanwick, P., & Stanwick, S. D. (2013). Understanding Business Ethics. United Kingdom:
SAGE.

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