Ethics are known as the “moral principles that govern a person or groups behavior”. Decisions are made on a daily basis within an organization, and every decision that is made there is a large influence on the organization, as well as it’s consumers, and employees. Ethical behavior in an organization could result in increased consumers, employee loyalty, reduced turnover, increased productivity, and increased presence of investors etc. For many, knowing that a company has agreed to uphold a moral standard or made a promise to work while maintaining ethical merit gives consumers, employees, and investors satisfaction and gratification. A company that sets out to work within its own ethical guidelines has a much lower risk of poor behavior, and less likely to find themselves in violation of laws. The reputation of an organization is one of its most valuable assets, the reputation of an organization is extremely difficult to rebuild if it is lost. It is crucial for an organization to keep their promises in order to maintaining their reputation. Organizations that do not following an ethical code carrying may damage a firm’s reputation and make it less appealing to consumers, employees, or investors. The world we live in can easily be affected by ethics or lack there of. For instance an organization that doesn’t properly disposes of waste products is harming the earth. Large companies that lack ethical integrity can damage underdeveloped countries by taking advantage of cheap labor to make a profit. Companies that operate without morality set the business world in reverse; these unethical companies should not be tolerated in our society. They harm the world more than they help it. Ethical policy should go beyond making sure a business does not have a negative impact on the world. Organizational ethics is a noteworthy behavior; all companies should aim to meet a level or morality in an attempt to meet the standards of the world. The first step should be to establish code of ethics.
I have been involved with the Best Buddies Challenge non-profit, an organization that consists of volunteers that can help create opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Best Buddies makes great use of free resources such as the Internet due to the lack of funds that profitable organization would have. Social media allows for connection with a multitude of people worldwide, and the Internet also allows for online donations, which enables the organization to cast a much wider net in driving profit for their cause. With the use of social media and the Internet there is a growing public awareness for Best Buddies Challenge mission, and it allows individuals and smaller groups to self organize around many non-profit causes. Best Buddies challenge, which has a location in Seaport, is the organizations largest initiative for fundraising. They encourage locals to participate in competitions including cycling, running and walking to help and encourage those with disabilities. The importance of the Internet grows rapidly on a daily basis in our society. The Internet has a large impact on local and global communication. In addition there is a multitude of applications for businesses and corporate professionals worldwide. With the use of the Internet, organizations that have an international presence have the means to collaborate with consumers and companies that are established in other areas of the world. The Internet provides more stable and efficient communication with other business and consumers. The Internet greatly affects this non-profit organization; it allows Best Buddies Challenge by allowing them to cast a wider net on a daily basis. It helps them to achieve a greater number of donations and drive profit for their cause. It also allows others that are passionate about Best Buddies to get involved and make their own impact on the organization and the people that are passionate about its cause.
The theme for this semester was wearable technology, mobile devices, mobile applications, and social media. As an employee of Best Buy Co. I believe this has a large place in our society today; it has become an essential part of our daily lives. It would be almost impossible to consider living without technology in our society today; technology has the ability to shape our future. Technology has been incorporated into most workplaces today in order to increase productivity and efficiency in a timely fashion. It improves communication, efficiency, mobility and a multitude of other intricacies in the workplace. BYOD is a highly popular new trend that I believe is going to be around for a long time. It allows employees to create more of a work and life balance, which allows the employee to be more productive. It ensures that employees will spend less time offline, which can allow them to increase their productivity. Since they are using their own devices they may decide to check an email, or answer a phone call even when they are not at work. With the introduction of BYOD employees are no longer restricted to a 9-5 schedule, they can be reached wherever and whenever. BYOD plays to the strengths of the younger generation, which is now the new workforce. They are used to having ready access to connectable devices and they are able to complete their tasks any, on the fly. It may also lower the cost for the company. As employees are dealing with their own personal property they will seek help to fix it privately when needed. BYOD also decreases the likelihood of a security breach because personal phones are being used instead of private company devices. Although the device is “shared” with the company it is still very much your device. All the contact, calendar entries, and social media identities should belong explicitly to the owner of the device. The company should have the access to look at what is posted during your activities on social media, but they should only be able to look at it from an external source like a regular user that views the profile. They should not have a right to access those profiles through your device.
I am very much aware that the government, law-enforcement, and employers use software to evaluate social media user profiles. I don’t think this has a large impact on your privacy; things that are posted to the Internet are there forever and can generally be seen by anybody. We need to be aware that we can be monitored anywhere and everywhere, and consider what we post to social media or on the Internet in general. If you don’t want it to be seen by everybody that you know than you should not be posting it on the Internet. When it comes to Google Glass and health apps the information or footage gets stored in a cloud server. This means that almost all activities that we participate in can be monitored at all times and it is written in the privacy statements that you must agree to in order to use the devices.
Overall I really enjoyed the course and the material that we learned this semester. I like that the course was an open forum of our ideas, it is very nice to be able to express our thoughts openly about the course material. I think that the amount of work due on a weekly basis was reasonable for a summer session. The assignments allowed us to take our time with the material while putting what we have learned to use. I like the cases in the textbook, it allows for more interactive learning. I personally am not a fan of online learning so I would have preferred to have a sit down class because that works better for my learning style. I personally feel like I am able to absorb more information with classroom style learning. As a professor I think you are extremely thorough, you try to make it extremely clear what we need to do, but sometimes I got confused because there was a lot of hoops to jump through in order to understand what needed to be done. I will say after a few weeks I had the hang of it and was able to understand what I needed to do to be successful,