Ethical_Issues_and_Management_Paper

Ethical Issues and Management: Manager as a Role Model Your Name Axia College University of Phoenix Ethical Issues and Management: Manager as a Role Model In today’s workforce, it is the management team that helps drives a company to success. Managers are responsible for a long list of task including; ensuring their employees are doing the job correctly and on time; ensuring that the expectations and goals are clear and concise; the expectations and goals are being met; ensuring that the employees’ needs are being met; ensuring that the employees are following company policy; and the list goes on and on. One major role of a manager is to be a good role model to their employees. According to Yahoo Education, a role model is “A person who serves as a model in a particular behavioral or social role for another person to emulate.” [ (Role Model, 2009) ] This means that a manager as a “role model” needs to lead by example. In this paper we will discuss some moral and ethical dilemmas managers face as a role model and the relationship between ethical responsibility and social issues. According to Trevino, L., & Nelson, K. (2007), “They [managers] are probably the most important ingredient in an organization’s success and they [managers] are frequently the most overlooked.” They go on to say that “managers are the lens through which employees view the company, as well as the filter through which senior executives view employees.” (Trevino & Nelson, 2007) This can put a lot of pressure on a manager. Managers need to understand that what they say is not as important as what they do. Managers can talk all they want about different ethics and morals, but if they do not follow what they say, it is all in vain and their employees will not listen. Role models are such because of the position that they hold, not because they want to be. As an example, parents are role models to children, teachers are role models to students, pastors are role models to followers, and managers are role models subordinates. In today’s workforce, managers can have a large impact on an employee’s ability to move up in a company. Managers deal with performance evaluations which ultimately can hinder or help an employee’s pay. As an employee of a company, management teams also have managers that they report to. In this aspect, it is important for managers to not only have equality for their employees, but in order to succeed in business, they need to be able to manage up, and be able to manage all of their work relationships. Favoritism is another moral and ethical dilemma that managers face in the workplace today. Spotting and overcoming favoritism is important because favoritism allows for other employees of the company to feel a manager’s judgment can be clouded. As a manager, and a role model, it is important to leave this type of dilemma out of the workplace. The management team needs to be able to take control of any situation and if favoritism is involved, the situation may take control of them. Considering that subordinates can be promoted to peers, and peers to senior managers, everyone in a business can have a large impact on one’s professional career. As a role model within a company, managers need to ensure they treat every employee with respect. Respect is not given, it is earned. They don’t want to be a brown nose to their management team while at the same time disrespecting the peers or subordinates. Managers are tasked with having good morals and respecting everyone around them. Even if there is an employee that goes to work just for the paycheck and gripes and moans about the work, a manager needs to respect them and when the situation starts to affect business, approach the situation with dignity and respect. When it comes to ethics, managers need to be able to handle different situation to ensure that the place of work is exactly that, a place where people come to work. Something that can hinder this environment is honesty. Employees of a company all rely on the information they receive from other employees of the company. The other employees can be senior management, peers, or junior employees of the company. Wherever the information comes from, it needs to be accurate because other employee’s information will be misconstrued if it is not. It is important for managers of the company to ensure the accuracy of the information. As a role model, managers need to ensure the employees of a company are all doing their jobs and doing them properly. As a manager myself, I have realized that management is not all glamorous. I worked for a small company that delivered lost luggage for passengers’ of seven major airlines at the Salt Lake City airport in Utah. Even though the company was small, I still had to portray myself as a professional because I was in constant communication and view of the general public. I was in charge of managing the deliveries and took care of everything from pickup at the airlines to drop off at the passenger’s address. There was a staff of about 15 individuals working for this company and I managed their time as well as the production of the company. When I first applied for the position, I interviewed with a 19 year old kid that left a bad impression of the company. At the time, he was the manager only because he was dating the owner’s daughter. There was much favoritism going on and I reluctantly took the job. The first thing that I did was sat down with the current manager and laid out my expectations. He agreed with what I had to say and accepted the fact that I was going to be running the business because he had no experience or training. Although he knew the business, he did not know how to manage the business. While he still retained his hourly pay, he did step down from the management position and allowed me to take over. It only took a few short weeks for me to learn the company, inside and out, and then I was off and running as the manger. My first step was to get some organization within the company. Everything they had was scattered within a small office at the airport that was leased out through another company. We were behind on bills and collections. The company owed rent and utilities and needed organization. The company was not doing anything about their collections either. I realized that there was enough money to collect from the airlines to catch the company up on the past due bills and quickly went to work collecting from the airlines. At the time, the company could not afford a company computer to I provided my own to organize their finances. Once it was all organized, I brought an employee in to maintain it all. I showed her how to do all the work and let her take over. Whenever she needed anything she would approach me with respect because she knew that I knew what I was doing. My next objective in the company was to ensure that each of the drivers knew what they were doing. I did this by leading by example. I took each one of them out and showed them how to manage their time effectively. I showed how my GPS helped me manage my time while driving and really streamlined my productivity. Many of the employees were just bouncing from place to place, drop off to drop off, and they were losing valuable hours of time they could have been more productive with. Because the employees were paid on a commission basis, I encouraged them all to invest in a GPS tracking system that would help them get from drop off to drop off in the most effective amount of time. Once I completed those steps, it was all about managing the company. Everything from showing up on time for work, ensuring my bags were delivered on time and to the correct passenger, and being a good role model for the rest of the employees to look up to, respect, and emulate. Being a good manager goes way beyond just showing up to work each day and completing the tasks given for a day’s work. Good management includes ensuring employees are using their time effectively, goals and expectations are clear and concise, goals are being met, ensuring that employee needs are being met, and much more. One of the biggest roles of a manager is to be a good role model to their employees. A role model is someone to look up too and they lead by example. In this paper, we discussed some moral and ethical issues that managers face in a business environment as role models and the relationship between ethical responsibility and social issues. References Role Model. (2009). Retrieved September 1, 2009, from Yahoo Education: http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/role%20model Trevino, L., & Nelson, K. (2007). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Higher Education.