Addressing Cultural and Gender Differences

One of the main ethical issues that companies face is one of social responsibility. By changing my company to one that is socially responsible would allow it to be viewed in a more positive light. Some efforts we could take would include volunteering time and making donations to local and national charitable organizations, such as The March of Dimes, Juvenile Diabetes Relief Fund, and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Each year, each of these organizations sponsor major fundraising efforts that provide assistance with research and financial assistance to families affected by these afflictions. By aligning my company with these organizations and becoming a major contributor, we can project a more positive light on our organization and help to change our image.

Another major issue that we would need to address and change would involve the ethical responsibility of our executives. We would need to work diligently to ensure that scandals like those at Enron and WorldCom don't take place in our organization. We would need to fully comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2000 to thwart against creative accounting, bribery, kick-backs and insider trading by executives that would negatively affect the company, causing negative press, possible government fines, and even possible dissolution of the company. Use of an outside auditing agency, not directly related to our investment activities, would assist in preventing these types of events from happening.

Another important ethical issue we would need to address would be in our production and marketing. Our main focus on the production side would be to ensure that the products we sell and the production processes do not cause harm. There is usually a degree of danger in any product or production process, but we must work to ensure that our employees are provided a safe work environment and that their safety falls within social perceptions of acceptable risk. We must also ensure that our products don't cause harm to our customers, and if a situation does arise, that we act swiftly to correct the problem. Our marketing campaigns would need to be directly geared toward the audience that we're targeting our products. We would need to be sure that if the products we sell are for adults, then we should not focus any of our advertising toward young people. We would also need to ensure that we don't involve ourselves in attack ads, subliminal messages, sex in advertising, or align ourselves with products regarded as immoral or harmful.

In a diverse work environment, there will always be cultural issuses to deal with. One that stands out the most involves cultural and religious holidays. We should realize that people celebrate a