What constraints do business managers in (your) society face, or are likely to face, in their attempts to improve corporate excellence? Illustrate your discussion with some organization(s) with which you are familiar. In today’s world, especially in Kenya where taxes and competition is very high and the economy is not strong, businesses are forced to behave unethically so as to attain a competitive edge over others, keep the business alive or to simply make more out of their businesses even though they might personally feel that certain actions being carried out are unethical. Every manager wants their business to behave ethically but are coerced to promote unethical behavior by the need to survive in this tight economy.

They tend to weight their actions in deciding whether to carry them out in terms of business profits. Unfortunately, in Kenya, businesses that make more money are considered successful even though they widely practice unethical behavior. This itself tends to promote bad ethics in businesses. Politics also tends to influence business ethics. ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE I have worked in an organization for two years, and have noticed a lot of unethical behavior. This behavior did not arise from personal morals and values but was coerced by interpersonal relationships and opportunities that came out in terms of competition and internal politics being the main factors contributing to bad business ethics. In fact personal ethics of managers and employees have been really good.

Economists say that competition is very healthy for the economy but in terms of ethics, from my observation, competition has been one of the major factors to the promotion of bad business ethics. Managers tend to look at competition as a great threat to their businesses and this makes them carry out actions such as tax evasion. Tax evasion is not only due to competition though, is it the constitution that placed such high taxes that forces them to do so.

For tax evasion, a company might as well ask their accountant to rearrange figures to show less profit or even a loss. The accountant in turn gets a reward to keep it to themselves. This promotes the employees unethical behavior. After all, if times are bad, the accountant needs to keep their job even it means going against your own morals. Also, corruption in the governmental sector inhibits good business ethics because businesses tend take advantage of such situations and bribe the government to get away with things like tax evasion. Again, it was the businesses that are coerced in to doing so because their competitors are doing it or because if they don’t, the business can close down; so evidently they choose to be act utilitarian in this case by keeping the business alive and hence keeping jobs for many employees.

On an average, the college I have been working in, has evaded taxes amounting to approximately six million Kenyan shillings in the last 3 years. This has been only to reinvest that money back into the business. By tax evasion, employees are paid better, services offered are more efficient, and hence the growth of the company is faster. This gives a competitive advantage over competitors. In the education industry, competition is quite high and a major contribution to their success. I can clearly say that even though the business is highly unethical, it is for this reason, at least in our society why this company is quite successful.

Also due to competition and high taxes, managers try their best to curb costs and in doing so, they make unethical decisions. An example is a college trip that must be supervised by a certain staff who is known to have a two year baby. She cannot leave her baby at home alone overnight, and the management knows this well. But just because it would cost slightly higher for the management to higher someone else to supervise the trip, they force the lady to go for the trip threatening to fire her if she does not. She has to organize something for her baby and in turn goes through a lot of problems that turn out to be more costly to her than it would have been to the management if they had chosen otherwise.

The manager certainly puts emphasis on the ethics before deciding to engage in such actions, but due to the circumstances he/she faced, the decisions made were unethical. Another constraint that managers face is the choice between interface and efficiency. Interface would be referring to the appearance of the employees to the customers/students in terms of looks, behavior, attitude, friendliness etc. Efficiency would be referring to the capacity of the employee to work efficiently and effectively in their respective departments by achieving departmental goals. In the organization I have been to, the manager puts more emphasis on the interface.

This puts down those with good efficiency. Those with good efficiency are not appreciated hence they tend to ‘fight back’ by disobeying or creating problems with those who have good interface. This clearly damages interpersonal relationships within the organization, hence reducing overall efficiency. If the manager chooses to invest more in those with good efficiency then he/she risks loosing those with good interface to his competitors.