First of all, I personally found Business Ethics and Accountability class very interesting, the

discussions were rich and opened up my mind as a student and future manager by listening to the
diverse perspectives of my fellow peers, professors and learning from the organisations through
interesting case studies.

According to my understanding, the established set of moral principles and code of conduct in a
commercial organization is known as business ethics. The intricacies of what this entails can change
depending on the organization. I would like to breakdown my reflections in chunks:

1) Ethics & Culture:

While some of my peers thought in business ethics could very culturally and regionally
defined, which means in some societies bribery may ok as its very much a accepted norm
where you know by default to get things done or project get passed, you need to bribe
people while in some societies, bribery is not a norm but my belief is – bribery cannot be
ethically right in any form of society irrespective whether it’s a norm or not. Even we live in
capitalist world and the main motive of the organisations is to earn profit, but it cannot be
the only motive of the organisation – Organisations need to balance between profits and
business ethics. Organisations need to be more accountable in what they do and how they
do.
2) Business ethics & organisational culture:
Organisational culture plays a major role for improving ethics in the organisation.
Organizational culture is one factor that influences employees' ethical behaviour. It is also
becoming more widely recognized as a quality that management can and need to influence
in order to enhance organizational success. Organizational culture includes both employee
interactions within the organization and their interactions with those outside of it. The code
of behaviour that an organization expects its personnel to abide by is known as its ethical
standards. The connection between organizational culture and ethics is that when
employees face moral choices, they are guided by the corporate culture. For instance, if the
company pays staff for winning the most contracts at all costs, a staff member may start
bribing potential clients to win more business. Employees might be less likely to be
convinced to conduct unethically if the corporate culture is to win the most contracts by
using conventional methods. This relationship has the potential to cause enterprises to
experience serious problems in the long run. It will be necessary for an organization to
change its culture if it encourages dangerous choices and immoral activity.
There is lot of talk about Microsoft as an organisation before Satya Nadella vs after Satya
Nadella and how Satya Nadella changed Microsoft through its change in culture. He not only
changed the culture but also increased the revenue and profits of the organisation
significantly. So, it’s all about the how organisations beliefs and designs its culture.

There are occasions when an organization may brag about having an ethical and inclusive
culture, but when it comes to implementation, they may not really adopt it entirely. What I
understand and think about Google is that many people choose to work there due to the
company's open, welcoming, and flat hierarchy culture. Employee X might have posted the
memo in the company forum if they shared this culture. Furthermore, it was entirely
immoral to fire him because he posted the message in the internal forum.

Also, its crucial for me to understand as a future leader or manager to understand how
culture is intertwined with ethics and employee’s behaviour inside and outside the
organization. Hence, the tool, it becomes very much important to design policies and culture
of the organisation by considering the legal, economic, and ethical framework which we
discussed throughout in this course