Patricia Rae L.

Resonable BSMA-2

Ethical Challenges in Today’s World

The greatest challenges for any business owner are how to encounter ethical challenges in
business. In these cases, it’s up to the business owner and managers to hold employees accountable for
unethical actions but also for them to behave ethically. To act ethically in business means building a
company around integrity and trust as well as complying with laws and regulations. It involves making
the right decisions while engaging in business activities.

One of the ethical challenges that I see today is discrimination. Racial discrimination, sexual
harassment and wage inequality are ethical issues that many employees and employers’ encounter daily
across the country. There are several types of discrimination, including age, disability, equal pay, genetic
information, harassment, national origin, race, religion, retaliation, pregnancy, sex and sexual
harassment. Discrimination can occur at businesses of all sizes. It applies to any action that causes an
employee to receive unequal treatment. For instance, firing employees when they reach old age or
giving fewer promotions to people of ethnic minorities. Discrimination and harassment should not exist
in the work place or anywhere. To prevent discriminations, the statutes to protect employees from
discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, disability, and more should be strictly implemented
and executed. Also, we should become as involved in the day-to-day activities of the business. This could
help detect harassment in its early stages and prevent discriminations from happening.

Another ethical challenge is nepotism and favoritism. Filipinos are known to be devoted to their
family and like to take or ask favors from relatives or friends. The practices of nepotism and favoritism
are widely known to exist in hiring or giving jobs. For instance, the business hires someone for being a
family member despite the fact that they don’t qualify for the job. Favoritism also occurs when a
manager treats an employee better than other workers for personal reasons. Nepotism and favoritism
are unfair and unjust. These practices also cause the employees stress and quit their job as they find it
harder to get promotion and rewards. The standard should be followed in hiring, if the applicant is not
qualified then they should not hire them. We should give job opportunities to everyone and not only to
our relatives and friends. We should also separate work and personal life. Avoid personal relationship
with work mates. As for the company, strive to create a meritocracy where you reward employees
according to performance feedbacks to prevent favoritism.

Lastly, the most challenging for a company is unethical accounting. To conduct unethical
accounting practices is a serious problem, especially in publicly traded companies. The accountant or
bookkeeper manipulates financial records to fraud and report financial statements despite being
incorrect. This unethical practice will create a social impact. This will lead to the closing of the business,
dissolution of thousands of jobs and significant losses for shareholders. In order to solve this is to
personally review our financial statements and reports to ensure that they’re honest and accurate. We
can also hire a trustworthy accountant to do our accounting jobs that follows the principle and standard.
We should also keep in mind the ethical values such as integrity, honesty and trustworthiness in
practicing our business. By that, we can execute our business with ethical values that will not only help
prosper our business but also in helping others.