Introduction
Mellow Monk attempts to demonstrate business ethics in the tea industry to be successful as an international organization. Through the application of a developed ethics program, the company goes on to develop so that it can meet the evolving ethical issues in the business setting.
Through understanding the present ethical and moral issues, the organization has established an ethical program that addresses all participants or employees in the company. An analysis of this ethical program assesses ethical and moral issues as well as precise factors of the Mellow Monk’s ethics program. This paper develops an ethics program for Mellow Monk Company.
Current Moral and Ethical Issues
A company should meet all requirements so that it can be considered a moral and ethical company. Mellow Monk attempts to be effective in the industry relative to its products and the way the company attends and respects the workers who work for Mellow Monk. Even with the greatest objectives, issues of unethical and moral practices can happen because of the nature of tea industry.
Ethical and moral concerns start with the nature of cultures and environment of the country where Mellow Monk develops, produces, and manufactures its tea products for distribution and supply. With employment at a minimum, the ethical and moral considerations focus on employment and working conditions, low payment scale, corruption among the managers employed to supervise the field employees, and establishment of appropriate care provided to maintain the company’s environment (LeClair & Ferrell, 2008).
An unstable political condition can be a basis for the company to continue with care, caution, and to embark on particular request by the government that would not commonly be accepted and might be considered unethical and moral practice.
Code of Ethics
Mellow Monk practices a formal code of ethics, and this code of ethics is in line with all practicable regulations, rules, and laws. It is derived on the uppermost ethical values and every worker of Mellow Monk is projected to abide by this code of ethics. Themes contained in the code of ethics of this business comprise ethical behavior and honesty.
Workers are expected to display and support ethical behavior and honesty when they come across conflicts that can happen in the company, for example conflict of interest whether professional or personal. A privacy policy is contained in the code of ethics of the company as well. This guarantees that information attained should be maintained private and should not be applied for professional and private benefits.
A declaration concerning compliance with the relevant regulations, rules, and laws is contained in code of ethics as well (LeClair & Ferrell, 2000). This declaration makes certain that the business will sustain methods to monitor agreement with foreign, legal, state, and federal laws, regulations, and rules, and will discover and report this action.
The declarations regarding the safety and appropriate use of company’s assets are contained in this ethical code as well. This declares that every asset in the company will be used just for the operations of the company, and a protected workplace setting is another essential issue included in Mellow Monk’s code of ethics.
This policy forbids harassment, discrimination, or solicitation that may take place within workplace environment. This policy describes the benefits of healthy and protected business environment and support employees to report injuries or accidents immediately after they occur.
All workers can access the code of ethics through store location’s hobby and Mellow Monk’s intranet home page. Workers, together with future workers, are capable of accessing the code of ethics and discover what Mellow Monk has trust in or follow. The code of ethics is evidently accessible for both workers and company’s customers equally.
The code of ethics at Mellow Monk is applied on all activities performed each day. As a developing business, the company is experiencing competition, room for mistakes, and unethical practices. With devotion and honesty, Mellow Monk will overpower these challenges and difficulties.
Workers are expected or supported to sustain devotion to the code of ethics through appreciating workers on teamwork, core values, honesty, and performance. Through this process, workers are capable of establishing personal high standards as well as keeping the values of code of ethics that are prepared and presented by the business (LeClair & Ferrell, 2008).
The code of ethics for Mellow Monk seeks to guarantee a positive business setting for both consumers and workers. The business considers that success starts with an efficient and honest ethical structure and committed workers who are firm to keep and appreciate the code of ethics while abiding by all ethical values of the company.
Values of the business
Managers and workers are oriented to the standards of the company through training and by other workers displaying an excellent example. Workers are informed what the ethical values are immediately after they are employed, and values are discovered, adopted, and improved in due course.
Managers and employees have dissimilar standards that they may provide to the business. Merging the standards of the organization and the workers may create a strong and effective business. Mellow Monk depends on the workers who are capable of producing ethical decisions, and this will provide their workers extra training.
All stakeholders must understand right from wrong, but supporting workers understand the standards, and ethics of the business will just create the business stronger and effective. Training is carried out to support workers with assistance or guidance when they are required to produce ethical decisions.
Managers Trained in Ethical management
Training of managers about the cultures they are engaged in is essential and if they are required to work in foreign country, they will be required to be aware and appreciate the labor laws, for example human rights, safety concerns, and child labor. Every country varies on what businesses observe as ethical.
When managers are trained about the cultures and ethics of the foreign country, they will be ready to create and produce ethical decisions. Mellow Monk will be observed by other businesses or companies as being ethical company and an outstanding workplace (Trevino & Hunter, 2010, p. 239).
Workers are Trained in Ethical Issues
Workers are required to participate in compulsory seminars, funded by Mellow Monk. The agenda of the seminar or training will be based on the department and managers participating in the training. The company will employ different consultants to help understand various cultures since different cultures observe ethical issues in different ways. The seminar will include discussions about ethics, objectives, and the way ethics affects or involve their work.
The workshop will be more interactive and will include practices or activities for workers. In training, various situations must be discussed so that if anything equal arises, the workers will be capable of understanding and to respond referring what they were taught. Standards and policy will evolve eventually and this is the reason continuous training is required on a regular basis.
Monitoring
The company is dedicated to use effectively and efficiently the company’s resources to measure honesty and ethics so that the managers and employees can maintain value-based culture.
According to Trevino and Hunter (2010, p. 239), ethical issues within the company are difficult to evaluate, but to ensure efficacy and to offer ethical rules, business goals, and quantification way of measurement line up to offer an effective standard measurement. Additionally, Mellow Monk will evaluate ethics and integrity using worker’s assessment, third party auditing, exit interviews, and examination of responses to the compliance, ethics standards and values (Trevino & Hunter, 2010, p. 239).
The company puts in resources and time into the training of workers on code of ethics and ethical behavior. The outcome of the training will produce a healthy ethical culture where every participant is encouraged to respond or operate as a measure of responsibility. Through application of ethics compliance hotline, workers are heartened to report all actions that can intimidate the integrity of the culture based on values that have been established.
Responses or alerts are encouraged through unspecified comments using ethics compliance hotline and is underlined through training on compliance and ethics. The company’s goals and objectives depend on the responses or comments from workers who are trained to make out misconduct.
Monitoring in the ethical program of Mellow Monk may be observed in the course of decision-making and planning within the company. The corporation takes advantage of the problem statement to produce value statements and sound mission for the company. Both value and mission statements of the organization serve as a basis for the creation of decision making and planning.
The value and mission statements provide support in describing the code of ethics of the company and offer the ethical concerns for every policy or decision making.
To guarantee that ethical concerns are integrated in this course, the entire policy and planning process should adapt to Mellow Monk’s code of ethics and ethical values. Through application of ethical policy making process and getting from the ideas of the corporate code of ethics and ethical values, the organization may be certain that ethical concerns are being created (Kolb, 2009, p. 65).
Program Enforcement
Mellow Monk permits the managers to implement ethical policies and guidelines of the business through providing forefront responsibilities to their workers by making employees accountable for their activities. Managers will participate in monthly meeting with their workers where they will discuss the ethical policies, provide a direct communication between the managers and workers, and prepare a question and answer period to help workers who might have not understood completely some of the ethical policies.
Formal grievances in opposition to a certain employee for breaching the ethical policies may be addressed directly to the manager, either secretly or individually, and this allows the manager to provide some decisions. The manager can decide to talk to the person accused and confer whether or not this is an ethical violation or not and ensure that the worker understands the condition.
If further actions are needed for the complaints, the manager will order the accused person to write a formal complaint, sign it, provide it to the responsible person, and maintain it on file for future complaints or concerns. After the formal complaint has been kept on record, the manager will have to discuss with the accused worker or person. The manager is expected to determine the situation at hand through explaining why this is a violation in code of ethics and precisely what the workers are required to perform in the future rather than this act.
A discussion with the worker must resolve most concerns, but not all the time. If the situation needs more action, a warning will be provided to the worker’s permanent record concerning the violation of code of ethics. Potential action may be taken against the worker or the accused, for example deferment of particular benefits that worker has been assigned, probationary period can be provided to the worker, or possible downgrading to the lower post (Kolb, 2009, p. 65).
If these steps do not appear to solve the issue, or if the violation of code of ethics is in infringement of company’s policies and rules, the worker or the accused person may be provided with termination letter. Before this step is provided, the manager and his superior should arrange for a meeting with the accused worker to have more discussions concerning the complaints presented to them.
The worker will be informed that he has breached the company’s ethical policies or code of ethics and all other efforts to solve the complaints have been unsuccessful. Therefore, termination will be provided by the manager and his superior as a final decision to resolve the issue.
Conclusion
Mellow Monk is a company working worldwide and has a trust in managing their operations ethically and morally. Mellow Monk appreciates the value of workers’ conduct and has a plan that is established to ensure that workers have a course or process to pursue. The plan contains a formal code of ethics, enforcement of ethical values, monitoring, auditing, reporting of ethical issues, and training of company’s members.
Mellow Monk understands that different countries have different insights on what is culture, code of ethics or unethical issues, but understanding the way to manage ethical concerns when they come up provides Mellow Monk a position over other domestic and international companies.
References
Kolb, C. (2009). Developing an ethics program: a case study for nonprofit organizations. New York: National Center for Nonprofit Boards.
LeClair, D., & Ferrell, L. (2000). Innovation in Experiential Business Ethics Training. Journal of Business Ethics, 23: 313-322.
LeClair, D., & Ferrell, L. (2008). The Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations: A Framework for Ethical Compliance. Journal of Business Ethics, 17: 353-363.
Trevino, L., & Hunter, K. (2010). Managing Business Ethics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.