Custom «Leadership» Essay Paper Sample

Many organizations always strive to adhere to ethical guidelines but in most cases they fail to achieve this. There are many reasons why they find it hard to achieve it; this includes poor supervisors, bad bosses, and inept managers. These people impact negatively on the bottom line leading to less production, higher turnover, and high operating costs. All these people have one thing in common and that is poor business ethics (Hoagland-Smith 2010).

It should be understood that an organization is a group individuals working together to achieve a common good. This means that each and every one should therefore have same and high personal ethics and values in respect to each other, customers, vendors, and to some extent, the community. Efforts towards achieving this will be in vain if higher employees or supervisors continually show negative ethics and values. Some leaders just lack integrity, credibility, and honesty. For instance the scandal that emerged at HP had to do with business ethics. Mark Hurd, the CEO of HP, was relieved of his duties because of the conflict between his actions and the business code of conduct. Ethics and compliance were the greatest causes of this resignation. It emerged that Hurd had a close personal relationship with a contractor, a fact that constituted a conflict of interest (Hoagland-Smith 2010).

Many leaders place so much emphasis on success, results; they don't care whether they are hurting other individuals or groups. Sometimes the ethical decisions they make impact very much not just on employees, but also outsiders. Many leaders especially those in America, are prone to ignoring ethics as part of their decision making process so long they advance in their dreams. Organizational pressure is also a big contributor to the ignoring of ethics. Many organizations sometimes impose on their employees operating systems that are tempting forcing them into acts that are wrong or questionable (Manning & Curtis 2005).

There should always be sound business ethics in corporate governance. This will bring about good relationship between board of directors, shareholders, employees, managers, and other parties related to an organization.