Introduction
There are many well-known situations in which individuals and organizations do not follow moral standards. Nowadays, people from management and leadership try to always care about being ethical. If sometimes they are not, their activities may lead to spoiling their own reputation, people will lose confidence in them, and their career will be in danger. Organizations and leaders should create an ethical environment, provide an appropriate role model, and make the right decisions. In this paper, there are two examples of an ethical and one example of an unethical behavior that shows how people and the entire world may react to and even change after them.
The First Example of Ethical Situation
At a Philadelphia Starbucks, two African-American men were arrested after being racially profiled by a white manager who called the police. The manager did not let them use the Starbucks’ bathroom without ordering anything as this was against the rules. When the two men decided to stay inside the café but did not buy anything, the manager called the police; the African-Americans were arrested for trespassing.
Some days later, Starbucks’ chief executive officer called this situation reprehensible. Like a real ethical leader, he fired that manager and closed all eight thousand locations in order to give his workers bias training. Many customers and employees did not believe that it would help; they were rather skeptical that a training marathon and lectures would sustainably change employees’ implicit biases. Also, he apologized for the way the two men were treated and wanted to meet them and express regret for the situation in person (Dishman). His action influenced other leaders and made them care more about people, customers, clients, and their reputation. Also, it showed that leaders understand the equality of all people and are ready to punish their employees for customer abuse.
The Second Example of Ethical Situation
The day before the New Year, the former president of Monsanto Chemical Division suddenly discovered that the manager of the company’s new plant did not follow company’s guidelines, and the plant was polluting the ground water. The next day he sent a team of inspectors to alert all the neighbors whose water could be polluted and ask them to stop using it. The company was providing people with pure water until the problem was fixed. This ethical action of the former president did not let innocent people get poisoned and demonstrated that there are leaders that care about others.
Example of Unethical Behavior
There are also leaders and organizations that do not follow ethical norms and cause public scandals. The actions of Tesla’s founder and chief executive officer confused his investors, staff, and the ordinary people. It was the year when the Tesla company got under scrutiny for the mistreatment of employees, its factory conditions, and nearing bankruptcy in order to meet production demands. Tesla’s founder was not pleased about that and responded by tweeting angry and sarcastic retorts. Also, as a joke, he announced that Tesla Motors bankrupted and made the company’s investors think that they lost all their money.
A video with him smoking marijuana and drinking whiskey caused Tesla’s shares falling by more than 8% (Dishman). His behavior may be considered as childish, offensive, and unethical as leaders and organizations should not do such things and have to control their emotions. His actions adversely affected the reputation of the company and its investors.
Conclusion
To draw a conclusion, it is fair to say that a person should follow a common model of moral behavior to become and remain an ethical leader. While leading ethically, one should always ask themselves what is right and good and what is wrong and immoral. It is crucial to think about what you are saying and choose the right words so that the leader or the whole organization may not be considered acting unethical. Moreover, employees should also be moral both in actions and thoughts if they want to keep their job and save their organization from the consequences of unethical behavior.
Work Cited
Dishman, Lydia. “Work Smart. These Are the Best and Worst Leaders of 2018.” Fast Company. 2018. Web.