Management Ethics

[Student Number]

[Course Number]

[Course Name]

[Session]

[Section]

[Semester]

Management Ethics

Introduction

The two chapters I have picked from the book of 'Business Ethics' for discussion are chapter one 'Unethical Behaviors in Organizations and Human Nature' and chapter three 'Hiring Ethical People.' I have chosen these two chapters because I found them most interesting of all the four chapters we have studied till week three. Chapter one focuses on ethical dilemmas and unethical behaviors in work places. The chapter also focuses on how organizations can achieve competitive advantage by implementing ethics in their daily conduct of business. Lastly, human nature and its relevance to ethics are discussed in the chapter.

Chapter three, as the name of the chapter suggests deals with recruitment of 'ethical people'. The chapter describes the importance of 'ethics screen' and provides six step job screening process. I found this chapter interesting because of the relevance of all the six steps presented and their implication towards depicting behaviors in work life.

Discussion

Chapter One

I found this chapter important and interesting because being the opening chapter of the book, it was able to establish a foundation of recognizing unethical behaviors within the organizations. Further, the chapter elaborated on the relationship between human nature and being ethical at work was also interesting to read. I will focus on particular parts of the chapter in order to clearly specify the three most interesting parts of the chapter.

The first part I found interesting was daily occurrence of ethical dilemmas. I never realized this until I read this chapter that minor issues like coming late to work or informing the boss about colleague's questionable working practices reflects the ethical behaviors at work. Before reading this I used to assume that going late to work is a personal habit and I never thought of looking at this habit from ethical viewpoint. This part made me learn the fact that ethical behavior is not restricted to big decisions and big tasks; it can be depicted from even the smallest task anyone undertakes.

The next part I found interesting was 'costs related to unethical behavior.' I have always assumed that being unethical at work must only impact the worker himself. However, after reading this chapter I realized that how many costs are associated with the unethical behavior. Legal costs, monitoring costs, employee theft, reputation costs, abusive treatment costs and recruitment and turnover costs (Denis, 2011); all due to unethical behaviors are new concepts that I learned from this chapter.

The last part that I found interesting was related to human nature. I have read a lot about human nature, but this book provides a complete different aspect of human nature and characteristics that human possesses. The basic learning that was most interesting in this part was to realize that people are born with certain characteristics. I never believed the fact previously that humans are born with prior knowledge of good and bad or with inherited sin (Denis, 2011).

The keywords I found most important in this chapter are 'ethics', 'human nature', 'inherited sin', 'stages ...