Ethical issues and recommendations on ethical issues

 

Choosing to be ethical can involve short-term disadvantages for a corporation. Yet in the long term it is clear that performing according to ethical standards is the key to sustainable development. There are 3 main issues important for the company’s success:

1. Reputation: The behavior of companies is scrutinized by their various stakeholders—customers, suppliers, stockholders, employees, competitors, regulators, environmental groups, and the general public. People are less willing to keep quiet when they feel an injustice has been done, i.e. Apple Company was involved in a scandal, the reason of which was that its employees had been working excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week.

2. Long-term interest: Long-term sustainability comes from concentrating on the double bottom line: that is, social, and financial performance. For example, many financial service companies in the United Kingdom generated short-term profits in the 1990s by miss selling personal pensions to people who would have been better off staying in their company’s pension plan. However, in the long term these companies suffered by having to repay this money and pay penalties. As for VYP company it can be said that short-term cost saving on workers can cause reputational problems in the future.

3. Attract new employees. Corporations that harm society or the environment actually harm their own employees, including those who make decisions. So if the company has poor public image based on previous unethical behavior, it will certainly flounder.

4. Solution. Behaving ethically is clearly a key to the long-term sustainability of a company. Long-term sustainability of VYP comes from concentrating on the 2 bottom lines: that is, social and financial performance.

So the company should accept lower profits to employ more builders and invest in improving safety.

 

Range of ethical issues

There are a range of ethical issues VYP faces now:

1. Accident at studio

2. “Banks – friend or foe?” – The world has the right to know the truth

Accident at studio

Why is this an ethical issue

VYP has had to hire a studio at short notice recently and had little time to set it before the filming began. Therefore, the set workers had to start working quickly and to work for almost 11 hours even grabbing some food only on the go. Moreover, one of the workers fell off a gantry and broke his arm. This is an ethical issue because first, it workers had to work night hours and longer than a normal working day. Second, the conditions of work were bad enough, so one of the workers even happened to get injured. VYP surely saved on set builders to cut their expenditures, which cannot be allowed.

 

Recommendations on this ethical issue

VYP should fully pay for the recovery of the injured set builder. The company’s image and reputation are more expensive than one person’s treatment.

VYP should investigate the case thoroughly to find out the exact reason of what happened however unpleasant it may be, and make sure such an occasion never happens again.

VYP should issue a press release saying that it cares deeply about health and working conditions of their employees and that this case will be carefully looked into.

The management of the company should conduct certain procedures in future to ensure there are legislative documents and work and insurance contracts protecting VYP’s minor employees from any situations like that. Because its long-term interests closely depend on this and it’s important that the company opt its long-term sustainability over short-term profitability.

 

“Banks – friend or foe?” – The world has the right to know the truth

Why this is an ethical issue

There is a programme about the 2008 crisis fee on which has already been agreed with the bank. Steve Voddil, one of the managing directors of the company is determined to make a healthy margin on this revenue, although the costs turned out to be larger than expected. Thus, Steve suggests budget cutting concerning the idea of not having any more interviews and also removing expensive computer graphics from the programme. Nonetheless, the programme director, Sarah Runner doesn’t really approve of the idea saying that “The world has the right to know the truth”, and that this truth can be revealed to simple, financially incompetent people only by displaying schemes made with the use of computer graphics and CGI techniques. This issue is ethical as it concerns VYP’s responsibility to tell the truth to its viewers which is basically related to its reputation among them. So the question is: should profit reasons be put aside this time in order to keep company’s image on a high level?

 

Recommendation on this issue

VYP has to reconsider the likely profit it can lose by integration computer techniques in the programme. The matter here depends closely on the assessment of this issue: whether the viewers will be able to understand the reasons for the 2008 crisis without CGI-powered schemes or not.

Actually, the most sensible variant here is to go along with the proposals or Sarah Runner. Since the VYP is particularly interested in the high quality of the programmes it makes it’s necessary that similar quality should be maintained in every programme in the future. As the estimated losses amount only to 0,1 % of the commissioned revenue it will be better to satisfy the needs of the audience by showing all the necessary figures and schemes with computer graphics so as to get the message of the programme across clearly.