Ethical Decision-Making: A Reflective Journal on Sustainability Ethics

This reflective journal discusses an ethical dilemma faced by a hotel manager regarding subordinates misusing company time and assets. The manager reflects on the decision-making process, considering alternative actions and factors influencing the choice. The journal also identifies virtue and utilitarian ethical frameworks that could have aided in the decision. It highlights the importance of ethical leadership and managing ethical issues such as honesty, fairness, and integrity in the hotel industry. The manager chose to address the issue personally, listening to the subordinates and establishing ethical principles for the workplace, rather than immediately involving senior management or imposing severe disciplinary actions. Desklib provides a platform for students to access similar solved assignments and study tools.

ETHICS AND
SUSTAINABILITY
[DATE]
student name
Institutional Affiliation(s)

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Post 1
Business ethics and sustainability refers to those code of principles that are
present in both written as well as non-written format that governs and brings value to
actions performed by people present in workplace (Brusseau, 2012). In hotel industry,
while many people spend most of their times in their workplace due to tedious and
around the clock job, it is not surprising that employees face many ethical dilemmas
during their work hours. This reflective journal of mine is based on similar event that
was faced by me while I worked for a hotel.
From the very first day, being a hotel manager, I was aware of general norms
of the company where we were supposed to get weekends off. Since every employee
spends much of their time working during weekdays, they become over desirous to
conduct their personal business at company’s cost. Similar event took place in my
workplace where I found that two of my subordinates were misusing company’s
assets and time for their personal use. From the moment I came to know about
similar situations happening in my workplace, it became fairly clear to me that using
employers time to conduct personal business is unfair and must be treated promptly.
Managing ethics have become a serious issue for hotel professionals, as
identified by Stevens (2011). Hotel professionals are responsible for providing ethical
leadership and communicate business standards. Diversity in work timings along with
honesty, fairness and integrity issues were found among few of my subordinates due
to which finding right codes of ethics became very critical for me. Each day I found
challenging for solving my subordinates’ personal problems regarding work timings
where they had to work for long hours and therefore had no choice but to utilise

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company’s time for personal business.
After facing such ethical dilemma, I was inclined to bring this issue in front of
my seniors so that they could make a clear statement or fire my subordinates due to
the grounds where they were exploiting hotels assets and misusing their work time.
However, I prevented myself from doing so as it could have hampered my
subordinates’ professional career. Instead, I decided to handle the situation personally
and therefore, listened their arguments and confessions where they blatantly promised
all sort of issues and that they would never do it again. I rather laid ethical principles
that we must follow in our workplace and time adjustments that could be made
moderately after taking our employer’s permission.
Although I decided at that time, I feel that using virtue approach to my
situation could have solved the above-mentioned ethical issue more critically. By
applying virtues approach, I could have made the hotel workplace practice sound
more motivated by educating my subordinates about virtue-based behaviour and how
a true professional achieves morally inclusive excellence (Dobson, 2007). Utilitarian
approach could also have helped in my decision as it could have directed those
principles in the workplace through which my subordinates could fell the happiness
behind conducting professional and legally correct actions (Brusseau, 2012).

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References
Brusseau, J. (2012). Business Ethics. Creative Commons.
Dobson, J. (2007). Applying virtue ethics to business: The agent-based approach.
Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organisation Studies, 12(02), 11-
12.
Stevens, B. (2011). Hotel Managers Identify Ethical Problems: A Survey of their
Concerns. Hospitality Review, 29(02), 21-36.