Business and Economics, Essay Example

Introduction

Work environments have become very diverse, and the public is very aware of their rights and demand that companies exhibit high levels of transparency and accountability. Some of the moral dilemmas facing various business-oriented organizations today include:

Fundamental issues

These are moral issues that include trust and integrity. Business has code of conduct that must be adhered to by all the employees and managers. Employees, therefore, trust that the business will pay them for their labour input, as the consumers rely on the business to provide safe products. However, these practices have not been observed by many companies as they provide deceptive products and fail to pay their employees in time (Cowton & Haase, 2008).

Responsibility

Consumers are today protesting to companies to take responsibility. Companies’ activities have a great impact on the community, the world and the environment. Companies, however, find this a challenge as they usually employ the out of mind, out of sight approach. This has made companies to the effects of dumping waste and producing little waste to the environment (Cowton & Haase, 2008). This has led to their profits to diminish as consumers prefer buying from companies that are environmentally and socially responsible.

Globalization

The shrinking world has enabled companies to take advantage of cheap labour in the 3rd world countries. This is usually unethical as it reflects poorly on the image of a company. It also denies the local people jobs at the expense of those in foreign countries and perpetuates the support for poverty.

The ethical issues in business can be solved on a step by step basis. The first step involves problem awareness.it involves establishing trust and identifying the problems. The next stage is defining the problem that involves analysis of the problems (Cowton & Haase, 2008). The next steps include decision making, implementation of the action plan, as well as an implementation strategy.

Strategic management is the science or art of establishment, implementation and evaluation of decisions that can help an organization achieve its goals (Rao & Krishna, 2003). It can also be referred as an activity where managers assess the internal and external environment in order to come up with strategies that allow the business to achieve its organizational goals. Companies engage in strategic management by coming up with competitive advantage policies to ensure the success of the business. Competitive advantage only means better performance by an organization as compared to its competitors.

Factors to be considered while formulating a competitive advantage strategy include:

Changes in the external environment

The external factors that must be put into consideration include political, socio-cultural, economic and technological factors. Changes in these external factors can create many opportunities that should be exploited by the company. Companies have varied competences, capabilities and resources, and that is why changes in the external environmental factors, affect companies differently (Rao & Krishna, 2003).

Ability to respond to changes

Companies should come up with technology, competencies and capabilities that allow them to respond fast to changes before their competitors. A slow organization is not capable of grabbing opportunities as they arise, and they may not benefit from arising opportunities.

Internal environment

An organization that has valuable, organized and resources that are difficult to have an advantage of their competitors due to the superiority of their resources (Nilsson & Rapp, 2005). The companies’ resources can have the following attributes that make them effectively compete in the market (Rao & Krishna, 2003). They include brand equity, reputation, culture, trademarks, patents and copyrights and also know-how.

Innovative capabilities

Companies gain competitive advantage through their superiority in innovation. Innovative processes, new business models and innovative products provide competitive advantage (Nilsson & Rapp, 2005).

Unique competencies

Competence is the ability to complete jobs successively. It can also be said to be skills, abilities, processes and knowledge that are required to perform a particular job competently.

Differentiation advantage

A business can have an advantage in the differentiation of its products by providing unique design, branding, advertising, product development, quality and outsourcing (Rao & Krishna, 2003). Customers will be ready to pay increased prices for distinct products hence high profits.

An example of the corporate public policy is the IBM policy which seeks to transform and build the systems by which the world operates. The company is committed to solving some of the changes facing the world and have collaborated with civic leaders, lawmakers, regulators and public officials. An example of the company’s work is that involving Technology CEO Council (TCC). The financial crisis experienced globally led to deficits in government budgets around the world. This made the economic situation of various societies risky and IBM has taken the initiative to ensure that these deficits are eliminated as soon as possible. This has prompted the TCC chairman, Sam Palmisano to advocate for the adoption of proven operational efficiencies and proven practices to help in saving $ 1 trillion by 2019.

The initiatives that have been formulated to ensure the deficits in budgets are addressed include: Reduction on the use of energy, ensure transparency in the government supply cartels, improve information technology infrastructure, reduction of field operations and ensuring liquidity of government assets.

The policy addressed all the variables from technology, energy, money and banking, taxation, transparency and planning that are essential in eliminating deficits in the budget.

References

Cowton, C., & Haase, M. (2008). Trends in business and economic ethics. Berlin: Springer.

Nilsson, F., & Rapp, B. (2005). Understanding competitive advantage: The importance of strategic congruence and integrated control. Berlin: Springer.

Rao, V. S. P., & Krishna, V. H. (2003). Strategic management: Text and cases. New Delhi, India: Excel Books.