Introduction
The notions of the business model and organizational strategy within any enterprise have now become the central aspects of business development, considering the rapidly changing tendencies and values relevant in the socioeconomic environment. Thus, to remain compatible in the field, chief business executives are to accept the necessity to follow the emerging trends and behavioral patterns within both the workplace and the business-customer relationship. One of the significant aspects of running a successful business in the 21st century is the adherence to the relevant ethical principles, as they draw much public attention nowadays, becoming a decisive factor in terms of customers’ decision-making process.
Hence, the enterprises that violate ethical tendencies fail to satisfy their clients, putting at risk their overall business organizational strategy. Thus, the primary purpose of the following paper is to evaluate the existing organizational strategy peculiarities of Amazon Company and its Mechanical Turk subdivision on the matter of major ethical violations and organizational misconduct. Moreover, an attempt will be made to compose a relevant organizational strategy, taking into account such beneficial external factors as an ongoing COVID-19 behavioral pattern shift in terms of organizational hierarchy and communication.
Defining Ethics in Organizational Strategy
The definition of a working strategy for the organization is, by all means, the most crucial aspect of creating a successful business model that would satisfy both employees within the enterprise and the customers. Previously, the major focus of strategic thinking was placed on the business unit’s efficiency and tangible outcomes of the working process. However, today’s social impact has shifted the following tendencies towards a socially and ethically oriented approach. Thus, the modern organizational model is closely correlated to the social environment that reflects upon the overall social tendencies in the modern world and relations in society. Hence, while serving as a small ecosystem, businesses are driven by a variety of ethical principles that define the patterns of their communication with fellow employees and the target audience.
Thus, today’s business segment has become a tool for mirroring fundamental social values for customers to feel secure about their investments in ethically friendly business endeavors. For this reason, today’s highly productive business units who were engaged in any unethical actions concerning either relationship with employees or end-users are not considered trustworthy despite their area of influence or cost-efficiency.
Since the very genesis of such a relationship model, big enterprises were put at a disadvantage due to their extensive use of unethical labor or marketing strategies within the organizational structure to retain the estimated profit. As a result, people began to pay more attention to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as they were easier to observe in terms of work culture and establishing communication with the clients of the organizational structure enterprise within the company.
One of the most challenging areas in terms of determining proper ways of ethical organizational strategy in the field of healthcare and medical equipment, as this area deals with sophisticated service cases daily. Thus, they are to develop an extremely ethical model of conduct to have the chance to operate in the segment. Moreover, today’s US healthcare market is replete with enterprises’ attempts at monopolization, making any slightest mistake unforgivable for both the customers and competition. Medtronic, being one of the most rapidly growing medical equipment suppliers, has made a series of crucial mistakes that resulted in a significant deterioration of the company’s reputation.
Medtronic Unethical Policies
It is a universally accepted fact that business management should be based upon the principles of fair play, encouraging the competitive spirit among enterprises. However, many companies, due to high insecurity levels or a plain lack of ethical education, begin to develop ploys against their competitors to make sure they will eventually be at an advantage. If previously, such an approach was not welcomed yet acceptable by the community, today, it has become a full-scale taboo due to the shift in people’s moral beliefs and values. Having lost track of public opinion’s contribution to business management, Medtronic decided to become fully engaged in unethical behavioral patterns until it was too late. Thus, over the past decade, the company was accused of various breaches of ethical principles of business competition, including:
- Corruption encouragement with the company’s management to pay practitioners to promote their service among fellow doctors and patients;
- Unauthorized equipment trade;
- Fixing the field studies and price policies in a favorable way (Freedberg & Alecci, 2018).
Taking all the aforementioned examples into account, it should be noted that such behavior is, by all means, inconsiderate in terms of defining a proper organizational strategy for a unit. The lack of proper competition due to a limited number of medical equipment suppliers in the state has significantly affected the overall perception of such misconduct, as more competition-oriented markets would immediately eliminate the company from the assortment. Medtronic, however, has a chance to survive the scandal with the help of its extensive area of influence. From a business-analytical point of view, such conduct might be justified by two theories.
The first theory presupposes management’s intentional behavior aimed at developing a dishonest competition pattern. Another, more affable theory for the audience states that some examples of unethical behavior might be explained by some subconscious psychological aspects that are employed without the actor’s direct intention (De Colle & Freeman, 2019). Hence, for the sake of impartiality, the following organizational strategy will be discussed from both points of view to define some beneficial interventions in the existing system.
Organizational Strategy Intervention
Considering the mistakes made by Medtronic before, one might conclude that the company itself is extremely profit-oriented, making the financial outcome a central goal of the enterprise’s management. Although such a strategy has a right to exist in the segment, it is important to properly define the channels that would secure the profit without explicit deception and ethical violations. Given the information about the enterprise’s business surroundings, some of the benefits of the company might be outlined to implement in the organizational strategy later. To begin with, Medtronic’s absolute advantage is the lack of competition in the market, making it possible for the company to reduce the necessity of cost-efficiency, as customers would still feel the product’s relevance and need to purchase it. Secondly, today’s rapid expansion of the COVID-19 pandemic significantly increases the overall need for quality medical equipment, putting companies like Medtronic in a more favorable position (Donthu & Gustafsson, 2020). Finally, Medtronic has a competitive benefit of experience, which is always an asset in the business segment.
Bearing in mind the aforementioned positive aspects, one might now define the major aim of the new organizational strategy. In the case of Medtronic, its major goal in terms of strategic reorganization would be to outline both cost and differentiation advantages in the relatively narrow market. Thus, the most appropriate and justifiable business-level strategy will be the focus of generic competitive strategy implementation (ul Musawir et al., 2020).
In terms of the following approach, it is of crucial importance to introduce one’s value to the customer through the conduction of fair competition and adherence to ethical principles. For this purpose, Medtronic should launch a full-scale marketing campaign that would include both reflections of its major advantages and beneficial propositions for the customers with the aim of a long-term equipment supply partnership. In such a way, the company would be able to become ethically pleasing to the target audience without losing much profit and even more clients’ trust.
Considering everything, it might be concluded that following the fundamentals of ethics has now become one of the most evident aspects of running a successful business. In the example of a large medical equipment supply enterprise, Medtronic, it was displayed how unethical behavior might contribute to the overall disruption in the ways of healthy business competition. Throughout the following research paper, some of the major ethical violations of the company were outlined. Later, some efficient strategies to combat the issue were introduced, emphasizing the notion of focus generic competitive strategy implementation.
References
De Colle, S., & Freeman, R. E. (2019). Unethical, neurotic, or both? A psychoanalytic account of ethical failures within organizations. Business Ethics: A European Review, 00, 1-13.
Donthu, N., & Gustafsson, A. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 on business and research. Journal of Business and Research, 117, 284-289.
Freedberg, S. P., & Alecci, S. (2018). Medtech giant pushes boundaries as casualties mount and sales soar. Web.
ul Musawir, A., Abd-Karim, S. B., & Mohd-Danuri, M. S. (2020). Project governance and its role in enabling organizational strategy implementation: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Project Management, 38(1), 1-16.