Ethical Conflicts: The Implication for the Realization of Firms Objectives (Published)
This study is based on Ethical conflicts: The Implication for the Realization of Firms objectives. Ethical conflicts occur when individuals are confronted with a clash between general belief systems about justice and morality as it affects their own personal circumstances. Ethical conflict is a process idea that cannot be eradicated in any organization. It is a process which constantly influences managers, subordinates, social life and growth of any organizations. Ethics goes beyond just making profit and economic development; it includes personal interest and systematic value integration. Ethics is concerned with individuals; manager therefore plans according to what he believes to be morally right. That means the company’s ethics may eventually be the norm and projection of the managers’ ethics, as a result, manager is faced with the challenge of aligning what he believed to be morally right to that of the believe of organization which he work. The objectives of this paper is to determine how ethical conflict influence the performance of firms negatively and ascertain the extent to which standard ethical behavior facilitate achievement of firms objectives. This research engaged investigative and qualitative research methods as we did not test any model in a statistical sense. Data was gathered from numerous sources, including formal interviews, internal documents, and the internet. However, there is a strong reliance on interviews because rich insights and contextual information was sought from the key informants. The paper demonstrated that the effect of ethical conflict on the realization of firms’ objectives is unquantifiable as firms internal and external dealings are constrained. Members of the public would no longer have confidence and trusts in the firms as personal or corporate dealing with the firms are minimized if not completely eradicated. This is a potential threat to firm’s performance. The finding also reveals that standard ethical behavior has the capacity to facilitate achievement of firm’s objectives positively as the confidence of clients is guaranteed and internal and external dealing of the firms not constrained. Firms that fail to educate its members can only anticipate a bothersome future. In today’s controversial civilization, we must and should be aware of the substance of our Code of ethics and the organizations should educate it members about standard behavior expected of employees during training and orientation session for effective management of ethical conflicts. If the employee’s find it difficult to key into ethical standard of the firm and/or traverse the ethical boundaries, he/she should be shown a way out of the systems as the success or failure of any firm depends on her ability to initiate and as well sustain policies that will minimize if not completely eradicated conflicts arising from ethical issues in the organization. These will go a long way in sustaining the performance and growth of the organizations.
Keywords: Conflict, Ethic, Ethical Conflict, Firms Objectives, Realization